The last thing you’d expect Tab Benoit to require is another guitar player, especially one with an equally high profile as a bandleader. But he teamed with Anders Osborne on his last album Medicine a full 13 years ago, and the two are reunited on this long-overdue follow-up (delayed largely so Benoit could get out of record-label limbo and launch his own Whiskey Bayou Records label). And it’s the synchrony between the two guitarists that makes this more than just another guitar-slinging Benoit album.

Since the two share the guitar work and co-wrote all the tunes, only the lack of Osborne vocals keeps this from being a full-fledged duo album. But that doesn’t mean it’s an album of guitar showdowns, even if he lets off a good-natured “Come on, Anders!” at one point. Benoit still likes to keep things spare, leaving plenty of open space for the rhythm section, and the two split their solo space instead of making this a cutting contest. Yet Osborne’s presence often takes Benoit out of his comfort zone: the title track is as close to outright arena-rock as he’s ever gotten with a floor-shaking riff—actually, a pity he didn’t try a full album of that—and “Bayou Man” harks back to younger and feistier ZZ Top.

You can hear Osborne’s influence in the songwriting too, as the soulful “Overdue” is a bottom-of-the-bottle confessional song; and he promises elsewhere to “make you smile and see the glow of your inner child”—hardly a promise you hear from every tough bluesman. On the other hand, “Watching the Gators Roll In” ‘is a pure Benoit swamp groove, and “I’m a Write That Down” has the tasty riffage and snappy wordplay that are always his specialty. It’s as much a song album as a guitar album, and it’s no surprise that Benoit’s delivered a strong one to his new boss—namely himself.