From the Guardian, SEPT 15, by John Fordham:

Like the late Michael Brecker in the US, British saxophonist Alex Garnett has spent a couple of decades helping other people’s music to sound good (he’s worked with everybody from the Stones to Humphrey Lyttelton) before stepping into the limelight himself. This New York-recorded session of original pieces with a terrific transatlantic quartet not only reflects his vast experience, but reveals a compositional sharpness that makes this new solo career look like a long-term one. The idiom is superficially very familiar – tightly swinging updated hard bop, and soulful tenor-sax balladeering. But Garnett’s combination of a brusque, hard-punched sound has a rare conviction – suggesting early Coltrane, the work of such elegant long-gone hard-boppers as Ronnie Scott and 60s Blue Note sideman Hank Mobley. The themes of uptempo pieces such as the opening Lydia and the Tubby Hayes-like Blueprint are full of exhilarating melodic turns, and smokey ballads such as the languid Three for a Moor and Dracula’s Lullaby take Garnett, pianist Anthony Wonsey and bassist Michael Janisch on constantly absorbing trips. It’s an unexpected gem.