" data-original-title="" title="">Hans Luchs arrives six years after his praiseworthy—but largely overlooked—sophomore release, Until Next Time (Self Produced, 2018). As with that album, the Chicagoan embraces the well-known motto of "less is more," distilling his guitar expertise and writing talent into less than forty minutes across eight new original compositions.

Luchs stands as the antithesis of what we might call a jazz guitar hero and rejects any instrumental prominence as a leader. His approach avoids pyrotechnics, and his solos are neither prominent in their placement nor excessive in length. While he is not a virtuoso, the syntax and pitch that he draws from his D'Angelico Excel EXL-1 is something as admirable as it is missed by a significant part of the jazz audience. As time passes, he shows himself to be uninhibitedly mainstream, both in that term's traditional and contemporary senses. Although his most obvious influence seems to be