Reviewed by Eric Saeger
Timbuktu-born singer – actually a superstar in his country – Khaira Arby joins the Brooklyn-based Jewish world-beaters in this outing, the inspiration for which sprang from the band’s journey to play a festival in Mali. The result is an infectious, intricate mixture held together coherently by Arby, who, aside from his sedate crooning in the bizarrely ‘Lay Down Sally’-like ‘Women Singing in Timbuktu’ and a few other spots, is a frenetic, pious, yodeling freak, evoking calls to prayer in the devout tribal patter of ‘Serigou’, the big-beat stomp of ‘Hey Ha Youmba’, the Middle-Eastern-tinged Afrobeat of ‘Skin to Skin’ and the pretty-much-ska of ‘Gawad Teriamou’. The band, meanwhile, is positively New York, tight as thieves whether going off on horn tangents or futzing with jazz-prog lines (‘Golden Wings’).
Grade: A
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