AGADEZ (Cumbancha Discovery/ Rhythmethod), the latest album by Bombino – nickname of Niger-based musician Omara Moctar – stands out among recent releases in the growing genre known as desert blues. This Tuareg guitar slinger has the music’s characteristic loping rhythms and dark modal drones down pat, yet there is a pacing to this album that is less field recording and more like a classic rock set. At times, Bombino’s laid-back, Oriental-sounding voice almost make him the JJ Cale of the Sahara, and yet he can squeeze sparks out of his Stratocaster that are as thrilling as the most untamed psych-rock garage band. Guitar heaven.
A passing acquaintance with the old weird America of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music may be fashionable for today’s alt-indie generation, but Frank Fairfield, who got his break opening for Fleet Foxes, is no dilettante; he is like one of Smith’s shellac disc relics come to life, from his banjo to his Brylcreem. OUT ON THE OPEN WEST (Tompkins Square), his second album, finds the 25-year-old Californian applying his multi-instrumental skills to a bunch of mostly original songs indistinguishable in origin from the archival ones. Fairfield’s uncanny authenticity can be found in the scratchy microtones of his fiddle playing, the jumpy half-bars of his guitar, and more than anything in his voice, which sounds as if it’s still in the 1920s, and was old even then.