After seven long years of studio silence, Boz Scaggs returns in 2025 with a brand new studio album called Detour. His 20th overall solo album and first since 2018’s Out of the Blues, Detour (out on October 17th via Concord Records) feels less like a resurrection and more like a quiet but firm reaffirmation of what he has always done supremely well: interpret songs with emotional savvy, understated soul, and the perspective of a man who has endured enough to mean every note he sings.
Recorded at Davlen Sound Studios and Hollywood Sound Recorders, the project is intentionally intimate, formed by a small circle of artists who seem chosen not for panache but for sensitivity. Seth Asarnow, who serves as both producer and pianist, is the central associate; joining him are Bassist Hans Trowsea, Drummer Jason Lewis, Keyboardist Jim Cox, Violinist and Violist Jeremy Cohen, and Guitarists Michael Miller and Ashra Weston. Collectively, they have manufactured an ensemble sound that is resonant, patient, and beautifully unhurried.
The album pulls the curtain with “It’s Raining,” the first track and the tone-setter for everything that follows. Scaggs fritters away no time establishing an atmosphere of after-hours, basement-lighting reflection. His voice, seasoned, smoky, and delicately frayed around the circumference, levitates over sparse piano and gentle strings, never pushing the emotion but instead allowing it to rise naturally. The effect is a quiet spellcasting: a standard retelling not for grand result, but for the honesty and vulnerability of its mood.
The third song, “Once I Loved,” stretches that reflective world into a soft, bossa-tinged reverie. Asarnow’s piano and Cohen’s restrained strings give the track a shadowy shimmer, while the guitar work provides the slightest sway beneath Scaggs’ vocal. He does not attempt to imitate earlier, iconic replicas of the tune; instead, he sings it with the ease of someone who understands longing as a friend rather than a dramatic event. It’s one of the album’s supreme examples of Scaggs’ gift for making well-traveled songs feel newly discovered.
Partway through the record, the seventh track, “I Could Have Told You,” deepens the album’s emotional palette. Here, the ensemble gains just enough width to let the sadness breathe. The strings sigh, the piano bends slightly behind the beat, and Scaggs inhabits the lyric with the soft resolve of a man recognizing what love costs. It is neither overwrought nor removed; instead, it offers a dignified sadness that only an artist of his age and experience can convincingly deliver.
“Tomorrow Night,” the ninth song, provides a slightly more solemn, bluesier weight. It has the suffocating atmosphere of an empty bar near closing time: a low-lit jam supported by stifled guitar notes and lightly painted drums. Scaggs’ phrasing is quietly gripping, allowing the pauses to say as much as the words. This is the blues not as an act or spectacle but as nostalgia, and the performance’s restraint gives it a distinctive authority.
The album closes with “We’ll Be Together Again,” the eleventh track, which touches down like a farewell. The arrangement is limited and luminous, allowing the vocal to hover just above the instrumentation as though controlled by a marionettist. It feels both like a goodbye and a gentle reassurance. Scaggs does not grasp for sentimentality; instead, he delivers the lyric with a tone of understanding and acceptance, bringing the album to a close with grace rather than grandeur.
As a whole, Detour is a testament to the artistry of subtle interpretation. Scaggs and his cherry-picked musicians never crowd the songs or, more importantly, each other. They leave space, space for breath, for emotion, for the listener to bend in, pulled deeper and deeper with each listen. While many artists late in their careers attempt to recapture youthful fire, Scaggs chooses a different path: one of wisdom, restraint, and deep musical empathy.
Detour is not only a collection of standards; it is a map of where Scaggs is now, and perhaps where his future lies. It is a quiet and beautiful triumph, and one of the most gorgeously understated albums of his career. A must-listen with Cryptic Rock gives Boz Scaggs’ Detour 4.5 out of 5 stars.
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