La Confusion

The ninth studio album from the blind Malian duo opens with ‘Bofou Safou’, a disco-fied electro-pop excursion that you'd be hard pressed to guess was Amadou & Mariam if you didn't know better. The track exemplifies the dilemma facing world music acts with a distinctive signature sound. As others before them, from Ladysmith Black Mambazo to the Gipsy Kings, have discovered, if you make an album that sounds exactly like the last one, fans may decide they don't need a repeat instalment; yet if you depart too far from the trademark style that brought you success, you risk annoying everyone. Manu Chao danced across this difficult tightrope brilliantly when he produced the duo's 2004 classic Dimanche à Bamako. While La Confusion tries hard to repeat the balancing act, it topples off the wire and there's no safety net. There are more disco inflections on the title-track, synths are scattered inappropriately all over the place and ‘Diarra’ is a gratuitous slice of cod reggae. Towards the end of the album there are traces of the old blues power on ‘Mokou Mokou’ and ‘Massah Allah’. But it's too little, too late.