Consumer Guide Album

Mdou Moctar: Funeral for Justice [Matador, 2024]
A protest record by Moctar's reckoning—against slavery, against uraniuim mines, against all the exploitations heaped on nations like his native Niger, with Libya and Nigeria north and south and arid strongholds Mali and Algeria close by to the west. I have no doubt the lyrics express and expand on his talking points. But for we who in this context needn't understand a word he's shouting, this is an exceptionally rich display of the kind of desert guitar the likes of Bombino and Imarhan deliver—only thicker, louder, angrier, and more rocking. A-