TINARIWEN

TUES. & WEDS.,

OCT. 26 & 27

WHEN THE 2000s roll on and critics point toward the striped-white stripped-bare blues of the usual Caucasian suspects, pray they'll include the baleful, inventive blues of Tinariwen in their VH1-like surveys. I can't imagine I Love the 2000s laughing about the twitching electric guitars of the mostly Mali-born ensemble, whose 10 members hid throughout Libya and Algeria for years due to their lyrics, which mix personal politics and illustrative imagery. Can't see Hal Sparks yucking it up about the revolution that was the Touaregs' move from traditions of violins and lutes to chicken-hypnotizing electric guitars.

But that's what Tinariwen did and do: help fuel a revolution in sound and poetry. The stripped, clicking blues gallop of its guitars—think a minimalist-minded Keith Richards joining Television's Lloyd and Verlaine at their steadiest—is as hypnotic as its mix of creeping call-and-response vocals, ancient wails and ageless lyrical concerns, dire and dear. Though 2002's debut, Radio Tisdas, was stark, 2004's Amassakoul is starker still, yet more diverse. The Television reference is important to note. Amassakoul's best songs tangle with flat, un-dubbed, under-produced scraggles and plucks of gnarly guitars, reminiscent of Marquee Moon's most open prairies. Their in-tandem approach makes the tiniest whining high-pitched solo winces throughout "Chatma" and the brambling "Amidinin" stick out. But the guttural hiccupping blues of "Oualahila Ar Tesninam" seals tight those same desert spaces with a claustrophobic energy, a mix of sneering lead vocals, blessed-out background chants and a megaphone's interruptive message. Like the rest of Amassakoul, "Oualahila Ar Tesninam" asks of its countrymen to "wake up" and remove "the poison in your blood"—a message that rings as clear in the deserts of the Sahara as it does the basements of Brooklyn or the Mississippi Delta that inspired Tinariwen's musical revolution.

Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. E. 4th St. & Astor Pl.), 212-539-8778; 7:30 & 9:30, $20.

A.D. AMOROSI