Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Fool's Gold, Leave No Trace

My review of the hotly tipped second album by Afro-pop Fool's Gold ran yesterday at Blurt. Too much pop, not enough Afro in a nutshell...

Fool's Gold
Leave No Trace
(IAMSOUND)

Since the self-titled 2009 debut, polyglot multinational Fool's Gold has streamlined from a rough-dozen players to a core of five, shifted its main lyrical language from Hebrew to English, and tested its desert blues chops in a tour with Tinariwen. The result, depending on how you look at it, is either conventional indie pop songs criss-crossed with interlocking Afro-Caribbean guitar lines, or polyrhythmic African jams that just happen to be slathered over with pop. Leave No Trace, then, is an interesting hybrid, not without charm, but certainly not without heavily hyped contemporaries either (i.e., Vampire Weekend, Ruby Suns, etc.).

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