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Khaira Arby
KHAIRA ARBY Gossip Clermont Music CLE 011CD
LES AMBASSADEURS RebirthWorld Village WVF 479113
Two veteran Malian acts showing that their music making is as exhilarating, feisty and punch-packing as it ever was.
Khaira Arby is an
extraordinary powerhouse of a djeli muso, expertly dish- ing out adrenaline-injected, open-throated vocal lines,since the 1970s. Her first in five years, Gossip is all sinew and bone, raw groove, tumbling circular guitar (Dra-
mane Touré), rolling bass (Oumar Kounaté) and antsy percussion riffs (Mahalmadane Abbanassane) and, for the middle tracks, the funky horns of the Debo Band, a galvanising foundation for Arby’s gut-felt overdubbed lead and har mony vocals.
Forced out of her Timbuktu home by the destabilised political situation and Wahabi hostility, Arby now lives in Bamako and this CD was recorded in New York. She responds defiantly in song calling for tolerance and peace in Djamba and La Liberté, as well fea- turing praise songs to patrons and traditional gems (such as the wiggy guitar-driven Alouha Homolo and the hypnotic wedding song Al Jama’a Bisimillah which kicks off the CD). Hear a track on this issue’s fRoots 55 CD.
Losing nothing of their original potency, Les Ambas- sadeurs recorded this four- track EP in the wake of last summer’s reunion tour, rais- ing money for Salif Keita’s foundation to help albinos in Mali. (Salif himself has famously risen above the
indigenous fear and hatred felt towards albi- nos through his music making.)
Returning to some old classics, Salif deliv-
ers Mali Denou and the plaintive Seydo with such passion and conviction that it’s hard not to stop in your tracks. He is such an awesome
Les Ambassadeurs
singer, and not in the teenage sense of the word. Complete with the beloved fulsome wall of brass, the band sound is heady and nostalgic but also a great showcase of masters at work: the well-oiled machine, the lightness of touch, the sparkling riffs. The frothy funk of Idrissa Soumaoro’s Tiecolomba Hé feels somewhat disposable in their company.
worldvillagemusic.com Sarah Coxson
RICHARD THOMPSON Still Proper PRPCD131p
Another day, another Richard Thompson album and… well, it’s a cracker, actually. How does he do it? Where others of far fewer years and achievements appear merely to be going through the motions, recy- cling old ideas and relying on
formula rather than inspiration, Thompson’s intensity, hunger and imagination seems to regenerate with painless ease. Even when he recorded a simple acoustic solo album of his greatest hits last year it still came out sound- ing fresh as a daisy.
This is Thompson in classic pose. Electric guitar firing on all cylinders. Vocals yearning and strong. Songs a little bit barbed, a little bit overwrought. Melodies that envelop you at will. A small band giving everything to the cause. Choruses that engage and uplift. At least half a dozen tracks sound like instant classics.
The closing track is especially glorious.
It’s called Guitar Heroes and, from a standard rock’n’roll base, builds what is basically an elongated platform to allow him to pay homage/impersonate his seminal guitar influences – Django Reinhardt, Les Paul, Chuck Berry, James Burton, Hank B Marvin et al. Genius.
Indeed, this is very much an album for lovers of the guitar hero side of the vast Thompson canon – and when he cuts loose, as he does on the more aggressive tracks like Long John Silver, No Peace No End, Patty Don’t You Put Me Down and All Buttoned
Up, the surge is electrifying and irresistible. Yet the constituent elements of his craft do still meet in the middle and balance one another up with sensitivity.
The album was recorded in Chicago with
producer Jeff Tweedy of Wilco – he who col- laborated with Billy Bragg on his Woody Guthrie Mermaid Avenue sessions – and he’s done a laudable job igniting the very essence of Thompson’s brilliance: that glorious raw- ness of touch which roughs up his finely- honed skills as a songwriter and musician, while the band (including Taras Prodaniuk on bass, Michael Jerome on drums and Tweedy himself adding guitar and vocals) presents an impressively committed barrage behind the great man.
www.richardthompson-music.com Colin Irwin
THE HENRYS Quiet Industry own label, hR2015
It’s six years since Toronto’s The Henrys put out their fifth album, and 21 years since their first – and their music, composed by kona slide gui- tarist and baritone uke player Don Rooke, has always had something of an unhurried, ageless feel, one that has
next to nothing to do with the world outside. On Quiet Industry the instrumentals, such as A Thousand Corners, the mutated blues-soul of I Kneed You and the fabulously spare, exploratory Invention Of The Atmospheric Engine, continue this with lazily busy drums, acoustic bass, harmonium and “muted piano”, but, and here’s the shock, they’ve written songs and added a vocalist (as opposed to the weird, wordless offerings of the equally reclu- sive Mary Margaret O’Hara on their last album) to sing words and everything.
Said vocalist is one Gregory Hoskins, and the alliance of his high, tremulous vocals and the strangeness of the band’s instrumentation and playing is nothing less than a revelation. On Reel Me In Gently the string arrangement and odd, keening lines create a lonesome mountain feel behind
Photo: © Judith Burrows
Photo: © Judith Burrows