Sidi Toure
Sahel Folk
(Thrill Jockey)

Each song on Sahel Folk was recorded in just two takes at Toure’s sister’s house in Mali, after a day spent talking and playing with a friend and musical collaborator over a glass of tea. That relaxed, intimate setting comes through in the album, a set of nine duos that evokes a summer afternoon playing music in the shade.

Although he did not come from a family of musicians (as demanded by the West African caste system), Toure made his own instruments as a child and joined his town’s regional orchestra, The Songhai Stars. The bluesy guitar melodies seem to flow effortlessly from his fingers and blend seamlessly with vocals sung in Toure’s native Songhai language. The songs include classics from Malian folklore as well as originals with a political bent.  —Nina Schwartzman

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Loose Lips Sink Ships/Victor Villarreal
Eating Happens
(Jade Tree/Vinyl/Robotic Empire)

This seven-inch single reflects two vastly different ends of the indie spectrum. LLSS’ “Sarah Palin’s Parasailing” is an atmospheric, almost psychedelic track. Looped guitar melodies mesh with keyboard accents while percussive sounds remain modestly in the background, providing smoother grooves rather than clashing textures.

Victor Villarreal (also of Cap’n Jazz, Owls, Ghosts and Vodka) offers the song “Prophesysing Hypothesis” which builds off the emotion and direction of his Alive LP. His composition is rich with the warmth of Samuel Beam, but gets weighed down by the sometimes interrupted flow of his lyrics. —Paul Bachand

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Dark Dark Dark
Wild Go
(Supply and Demand)

The songs on Wild Go would be equally at home performed in a vast, empty opera house, a deserted western saloon, a French cabaret club long after closing time or a WWII concentration camp where Allied soldiers have just arrived too late to save anyone. The pervading feeling is one of great emptiness and timelessness, but it’s not just the considerable reverberation provided by the album’s recording spaces (listed as a renovated church and an old theater that’s pictured in the CD’s inner fold). Minor keys, dense unison vocals and the prevalence of wonderfully “lonely” instruments like the accordion, violin, banjo and clarinet make the emptiness even thicker and more desperate, like a fog on the North Sea that you expect a Nazi U-Boat to come silently pushing through, or the stale cigarette smoke in a cold, windowless interrogation room. —Tom Sturm