Azel

The music of the Niger-born Touareg guitarist Omara ‘Bombino’ Moctar seems to have captured the imagination of the American indie-rock fraternity. His last album, 2013's Nomad, was produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and this time Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors takes the helm. Recorded in a converted barn on a farm in Woodstock, New York, the result is a highly accessible album but one which seems to have tamed some of the ineffable desert mystery.

Longstreth has added Western harmonies to ‘give the songs new depth and colour’ but the hues seem muted rather than more vivid. Certainly it's a sunnier, bouncier take on the traditional Touareg blues-rock sound. Bombino dubs it ‘Tuareggae’ but it's arguably a contrivance too far. Rockers such as ‘Timtar (Memories)’ and the crunching Clapton/Hendrix pyrotechnics of ‘Iyat Ninhay/Jaguar (A Great Desert I Saw)’ should help Bombino to reach a new audience, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's no coincidence that to these ears, the most satisfying moments come on ‘Inar (If You Know the Degree of My Love for You)’ and ‘Naqqim Dagh Timshar (We are Left in This Abandoned Place)’, two acoustic numbers that also happen to be the least Westernised.