El Habitante de la Tarde Roja

If you don't know what tarde roja means, don't despair. The thick little booklet that comes with this release contains dozens of photographs of sunsets, all cliché-perfect for next month's travel magazine cover – or your granny's parlour wall, perhaps; a single page contains an illegibly small lyric sheet. Not a great welcome to a new artist (for me, anyway). This is the fifth album by Juanito Makandé, singer-songwriter and guitarist, who is backed by a super-smooth Latin jazz-funk band that leans towards soft brass and the flamenco-style picking of the singer's native Andalucía. His vocals are breathy, smoky, somewhere between Gerry Rafferty and the chap from Mexican band Maná. It's pleasant, soulful, limited in range.

This is not a fundamentalist jazzers' disc, a pop energy powering some songs, reggae beats underpinning others. The solos and licks are clean but unoriginal, which rather weakens the overall effect. MoR is by no means an Anglo-American preserve. This is really just another forgettable fusion.