The Robert Cray Band are back with their new album 'Twenty' this month and will be playing tracks from it at The Lowry on Saturday 18th June. They recently racked up 1,000 live performances together, so you can bet they'll be an impressive unit by the time they arrive in Salford. With 'Twenty' already being hailed as one of their best albums to date, it's bound to be a show to remember.

The band, fronted by the silky-voiced guitar maestro Robert Cray (accolyte of the likes of Eric Clapton, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker), are on top form with 'Twenty', which has been recorded to reflect the feel of their live performances. Starting with 'Poor Johnny', and running through 'That Ain't Love' and 'Does It Really Matter', the opening songs are all infectiously catchy and instantly memorable.

However, the album's highlight is the title track, 'Twenty', which is about the war in Iraq, as Cray explains: "The song is about a innocent young guy, who, after the events of 9/11, wants to do his part for his country," Cray explains. "He doesn't know he's going to end up in Iraq, watching the horror that's going on there…and he ends up losing his life. It's a subject that needs to be spoken about and is in some ways, a continuation from one of the songs we did on the last album."

That song was 'Distant Shores', and is also well worth checking out, though 'Twenty' is lyrically and musically one of the strongest that Cray has ever released. However, this album is also notable for it's varied styles: "What I like most about the album is that the variety of songs," Cray said. "We covered a lot of bases on the record - from a touch of jazz with 'My Last Regret' and 'Two Steps From The End' to 'Does It Really Matter' which has a rock feel to it. We have a straight-up blues thing with 'It Doesn't Show' and the song 'Poor Johnny' even has an early reggae or ska kind of beat to it."

Another surprising aspect is the lack of celebrity guest stars, given how many friends Cray has in high places. Keyboardist and co-producer Jim Pugh explains: "There's always the pressure to come up with something that makes an album different and yes, we could have kinds of 'special guests' but unless there's a good reason to do that, it can become tiresome to bring people in just for the sake of it. We made this album fresh by not rehearsing the songs before we went in to record.

"We all agreed that if you rehearse something over and over for a week, you can become complacent about the material. When we got to the studio this time, we just started playing the songs we'd basically agreed to record and that made the recordings much looser. We took advantage of the fact that we've been playing together for so long that we have a 'feel' for each of us is going to do. Mostly what you hear on the record are first takes."

It says a lot about the Robert Cray band that their first takes sound better than most of their contemporaries' master takes, and also bodes well for the live performances of these songs. So if you like bluesy-jazz, jazzy-blues or just the sound of great musicians playing great songs, get a hold of 'Twenty' when it comes out and make sure you are at the The Lowry next month to see them...