Tinariwen: Hoggar
Three of the group’s founding members – Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni and Touhami Ag Alhassane – remain and are joined here for the first time in 25 years by Tinariwen co-founder Diarra and by younger musicians from the bands Imarhan and Terakaft in a trans-generational communal summit of tribal elders and their disciples.
As for the music, all these years on, Tinariwen’s loping, syncopated rhythms and interlocking serpentine guitars now sound familiar rather than exotic, although the raw earthiness of the sound – here more acoustic and stripped-down than on much of their recent work – has lost none of its visceral power.
More than ever, though, you need the translations of their Tamasheq lyrics to grasp the full extent of the foreboding and sense of crisis that pervades the album from the opener “Amidinim Ehaf Solan”, a slow and mournful threnody for the fortunes of the Tuareg people, to the dark “Aba Malik”, a dubbed-up malediction of Beefheartian intensity directed at the Russian mercenaries who have invaded the land (“curse you Wagner/ Curse your mother!”).
On “Imidiwan Takyadam” the sweet tones of José González contrast gloriously with the earthy basso profundo of Ibrahim Ag Alhabib over a female chorus lamenting the plight of their sisters living under the “hellish tyranny” of Islamist misogyny.
Imarhan’s Iyad Moussa Ben Abderrahmane provides the deep, echoing desert blues guitar lines over a rhythm of clattering hand claps on the sombre “Tad Adounya” and there’s more apocalyptic blues lamentation on “Erghad Afeweto”, which finds the Tuaregs’ desert lands on fire and populated only by “the orphaned child and the rotting carcasses of the herds.”
There are odd moments of playfulness, most notably on “Khay Erilan” which translates as “new model” and indulges Tuareg campfire dreams of owning the latest Toyota Landcruiser, like a riposte to Janis Joplin’s “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”. The melismatic Sudanese chanteuse Sulafa Elyas also offers a ray of sunshine on the lovely traditional folk song “Sagherat Assan”.
Such light relief is welcome. Elsewhere, amid a troubling world of woe, this is Tinariwen as deep and darkly compelling as we’ve ever heard them.
Nigel Williamson, Uncut, April 2026