Members of Tinariwen may have grown up listening to Led Zep and Santana, but the down- and-dirty guitar chugging on Aman Iman: Water Is Life (World Village) puts me more in mind of rockabilly than arena rock. I blame the one-string "walking" alto riffs on "Matadjem Yinmixan" (Why All This Hate Between You?), “Cler Achel" (I Spent the Day) and other tracks for nudging me toward expectations of Johnny Burnett-style echoplex vocals. But these Tuaregs of northeastern Mali have something just as good with their aching lead vocals straight out of a Sahara honky-tonk and band-of-outlaw female voices backing them with equal proportions of honey and vinegar. It's a tight communal sound with irresistible riffs that unroll for mile upon mile and songs that never run out of steam.

Not all trance music makes good dance music here, though I suppose you could clomp and sway to "Ahimana" (Oh My Soul), which gets its juice from recitations by touring-shy poet Japonais. "Soixante Trois" (Sixty Three), about the Tuareg rebellion of  1963, is pitched to an even lower vibe; buzzing guitar and vocals barely above a whisper create a dead-of-night, campfire-lit memorial to those who fell to the Malian army. Final cut "Izarharh Tenere" (I Lived in the Desert), featuring Ibrahim Ag Alhabib backing himself on acoustic guitar, is downright ghostly. Later an electric guitar chimes in, and although the pace picks up, the same mysterious ambience hangs on. All the cuts have a degree of this, a sense of eavesdropping on a group of people who know some hidden truth that I can only guess about. This and those devilish riffs add up to a wonderful album.