Aman Iman: Water Is Life
-By Li Robbins

Independiente Rating: ***1/2

With their third international release, Tinariwen, former nomads from the Sahara, have taken all their music's characteristic elements: the rolling groove, the hand claps, the raw electric guitar, and call and response vocals, and focused them with a kind of controlled ferocity. The result, an even bluesier feel, is likely to have "crossover" appeal, and given the album's producer (guitarist Justin Adams of Robert Plant's Strange Sensation), that's no surprise. What might surprise some, though, is the way songs of displacement and rebellion, sung in Tamashek, can be at once so laid-back and yet still so stirring.