Review Summary: Like "The Radio Tisdas Sessions", except without any of its emotion or beauty. As drab as the grey tones on the cover.
In the music world, several terms have been coined to describe any given band’s difficulties in maintaining their quality level as their career progresses. To the famous “sophomore slump”, describing a decrease in quality from the debut to the second album, music critics have recently added another term, describing the slump in quality on the third album of a previously very strong series. It has been labeled the “third album syndrome”, and it can result from a multiplicity of factors, from the hectic nature of life on the road to the failed execution of new musical ideas, or simply a drought in creativity. It is just as hard to recover from as the “sophomore slump”, and it changes the band’s career just as unequivocally, sometimes going so far as to renew their fanbase entirely, with the old fans stepping away in disgust and a new generation embracing the band’s sound at the exact turning point and running with it from that moment on.
Aman Iman, the third album of Malian desert bluesmen Tinariwen, sees the band suffer from a clear case of “third album syndrome”. Where debut
The Radio Tisdas Sessions won listeners over on its raw honesty and beautiful simplicity, and
Amassakoul stepped over to the mainstream through poppy hooks and rap sections, the 2007 album contents itself with rehashing old ideas, taking a very conscious – and very unpleasant – step back in the band’s sound.
In fact, this album could be described with the utmost simplicity. Take
Radio Tisdas, remove the inspiration and emotion, and you have
Aman Iman. Gone are the innovations brought along by
Amassakoul and which made it such a great album; gone, also, is the chilling beauty of the debut. What’s left is merely that feeling of listening to one continuous, gigantic song one got on
Radio Tisdas, except this time that one song isn’t even good.
Structurally, not much has changed in Tinariwen’s sound. Other than the removal of the poppier elements, the band continues to thrive on the same factors: guitar picking, languid rhythms, choir vocals and an overall melancholy feel. The difference is that this time it feels like they’re doing it because they
have to, rather than because they
want to. One gets the feeling Tinariwen are doing but the bare minimum required to meet expectations; the excellent musicianship is still there, but it’s as though, somehow, the group lost the pleasure they had in making music. As a result, the whole album feels flat and incredibly boring, with only a couple of moments capturing the listener’s attention.
Matadjem Yinmixan, for example, may sound exactly the same as every other song in this or any other Tinariwen album, but it at least manages to convey some of the joy the group once had in what they did; the same goes for
Amatant Tilay, albeit to a lesser extent. The rest of the album literally fades out of the listener’s attention span, and one is often startled to realize that they’ve been listening to music for the past ten minutes and have not registered a single detail of what transpired.
In short, then, this is easily the least recommended of Tinariwen’s first three albums, and it constitutes an incredibly frustrating listening experience. Part of this is due to the fact that, for the first time, a listener does not derive a sense of pleasure or joy from listening to one of the group’s albums. If you’re interested in the - admittedly exciting – desert-blues sound of this band of musicians, go with any of their other albums; this one should be left to rest quietly on its shelf at the store, or on its download page, as it is never any more than painfully underwhelming.
Recommended Tracks
Matadjem Yinmixan
Amatant Tilay
