Ron Miles' Blue Note debut as leader, aged 57, reflects his straightahead virtues, and label boss Don Was' nurturing of Blue Note's traditions; “It's not like they were looking to sign some old guy from the middle of the country!” Miles marvelled in his local Denver paper. Was responded emotionally to the cornetist's 12th album as leader overall, written as Miles' father died in 2018. His healing Christian faith in an afterlife, and gratitude for their final months' together, is set alongside racial and political disquiet voiced more viscerally with the same band on I Am a Man (2017). Miles starts on a Caligari slant – all anguished German Expressionist angles – but is neither radical nor rushed amidst his all-star bandmates, letting Jason Moran's piano race urgently ahead in ‘Queen of the South’, and keeping his muted cornet contemplative in ‘Average’, over fellow Coloradan Bill Frisell's Midwestern twang, and Brian Blade's cymbals' glitter and hiss. His tone balances regret and acceptance in his ballads' mournful corners, while also able to converse with Frisell's psychedelic blues coda on ‘Custodian of the New’. ‘This Old Man’ finds a mysterious heart to his father's memory, an opaque pool circled by Frisell's phased licks and Morse code plucks. This music's understated blues and roots find deep feeling in familiar jazz places.