Album Of The Week: Amadou & Mariam Folila

Amadou & Mariam have been making music forever, but when they first hit my radar about seven years ago, their mere existence seemed like some impossible-to-make-up story of music's power to overcome awful circumstances: Two blind musicians from Mali, married to each other, traveling the world and performing a cosmopolitan sort of Afro-pop and sounding absolutely transported with joy. That's a lovely story in a simplistic TV-movie sort of way, but it also sells the duo's musical skills short. And now that they've been in the Western media spotlight for the better part of the decade, it's been nice to see the feelgood narrative fade to the background and to see the world recognize Amadou & Mariam for what they are: Expert pop synthesists. Breakout single "Sabali," for instance, sounds like pure and fully-realized 2009 robo-pop, a fluid and fully hybridized combination of any number of things that were happening in global pop music at that moment. And Folila, their new one, is something even more interesting. There's a lot going on on the album, but at its heart it's a euphoric psychedelic rock album.