Saying that Sonny Landreth just made a blues album is a real heavy exercise in redundancy, yet on his latest, the acclaimed guitar slinger employs his patented sliding-and-fretting technique to the most swampy music he’s done in a dog’s age. If you don’t recognize the titles of the covers on sight—“It Hurts Me Too,” “Key to the Highway,” “Dust My Broom”—you’re probably not ready for a Sonny Landreth album, anyway.

Nevertheless, he doesn’t damp the fire of his “Slydeco” approach to his instrument, and it’s a real treat to hear a Delta blues original like “The High Side” get the Sonny treatment. Combined with the natural soul in his voice and some Appalachian harmonies, it sounds amazingly intricate for Americana without disturbing the simplicity of the sentiment. The covers are a little straighter, but for every one of those there’s a song like “Bound by the Blues,” a possible hit that taps into the same lost-in-the-desert vibe of ZZ Top’s jazzier explorations. For that matter, this is the swamp-poppiest “Key to the Highway” no one knew they were waiting for.

In the end, Bound by the Blues is still the Landreth album you want to use to introduce old blues heads who don’t give a shit about rock and roll: a slow grinder like “Firebird Blues” lets his neck travel all over 20th century America while remaining firmly rooted in its juke-joint place and time. You can’t box a freak like Sonny in for too long.