The Tunis Diaries

This is a sprawling double album from the highly cosmopolitan and experimental Tunisian-born, New York-based singer-songwriter Emel. Hot on the heels of last year's Everywhere We Looked Was Burning, the first of her career to be sung mostly in English, this collection offers a ‘Best Of’ reworking of the prime cuts from her back catalogue alongside covers from the Anglo-American mainstream.

Recorded in Tunis with only a laptop, tape recorder and classical guitar, the first part of the double disc, entitled Day, is a beautifully pared-back set of ballads sung in Arabic. Her voice is haunting, the rhythms gently insistent, building tension and crescendo by layers, in an echo of more traditional North African styles. The covers are a strange juxtaposition with the self-penned work. Entitled Night, there is a distinctly dark vibe to the second disc – from Black Sabbath and System of a Down to Leonard Cohen and Nirvana. Introspection is the buzzword here, but with the thrashing guitars absented for simple plucked acoustic. One can only assume that they appear here on The Tunis Diaries as a comment on the state of things in Tunisia today. If so, it is a bleak assessment.