Consumer Guide Album

Anansy Cissé: Anoura [Riverboat, 2021]
In 2014, this Timbuktu-based Songhai guitarist-vocalist debuted with Mali Overdrive, a more than respectable, not quite riveting traversal of the harsh, soulful byways of rock-inflected, Tuareg-dominated desert blues. He'd already begun this follow-up when en route to a 2018 peace conference he was accosted and detained by thugs who destroyed his instruments, which you can see might set him back a little. But shored up by time and fatherhood he recovered, and the result is this spiritual-sounding album--still desert blues, but softened with an airy sweetness that recalls no close parallels. If you're not entranced by the opening sequence, sweetly keened "Tiawo" to smoothly grooveful "Foussa Foussa" to quietly raucous "Tiara," keep going. You'll get there. A-