Elwan

The seventh album from the world's favourite Touareg rockers is an album of both power and poignancy. It's a tale of two deserts: like its predecessor, Emmaar, parts were recorded in the Californian desert of Joshua Tree National Park while in exile from the Islamist troubles in northern Mali; then the band reconvened for a further session at an oasis in southern Morocco, near the Algerian frontier. The US tracks, such as the bluesy ‘Nannuflày’ with its massed guitars and the cranked-up ‘Sastànàqqam’, rock as hard as anything the band has ever recorded, bolstered by the presence of American alt-rock luminaries such as Kurt Vile, guitarist Matt Sweeney and Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees.

If those recordings provide the power, the Moroccan sessions bring the poignancy. Accompanied by a local group of Berber Gnawa trance musicians, tracks such as ‘Talyat’ and the acoustic ‘Assàwt’ are looser and more visceral, yet still uncompromising in their intensity. To these ears Emmaar was something of a disappointment, its sombre, vaguely dispirited tone suggesting that the band had been badly knocked by the violent upheavals in Mali. On Elwan, their spirit burns as indomitably as ever.