Tinariwen - Elwan

The Guardian 80

(Wedge)

With their Saharan homeland now a conflict zone threatened by Salafist insurgents, the Tuareg band recorded this seventh album partly in California’s Joshua Tree national park and partly camped at an oasis in southern Morocco. Its moods are correspondingly distinct. Tracks such as Tiwayyen come in a blaze of psych guitars to remind us why early on the group were compared to the Grateful Dead: a Saharan rock’n’roll band. Then there are songs like Ténéré Tàqqàl, a lament for the despoilation of their home, and the shimmering blues of Nànnuflày, evoking the emptiness of the desert. In between, Tinariwen’s call-and-response vocals roll inexorably, entrancingly along. They are still the champions of the genre they created.