Tuesday nights headline show from Songhoy Blues was easily the liveliest crowd I've seen at the Concorde 2 in a long time. It was only as far back as May this year that Songhoy Blues were supporting Tinariwen (and giving them a run for their money) but a summer of UK festivals, Jools Holland and 6 Music have served them well. People were crammed into every nook and cranny eager to catch Mali's rising young stars for another performance of their very special bluesy afro-beat stylings. The band begin with lead guitarist Oumar Toure fiddling around a blues lick that sounds like something Jimi Hendrix would have cooked up, but cleaner and brighter, he is a phenomenal guitarist and understated performer who seems to me to be at the heart of the Songhoy Blues sound. A sound that is straightforward and unadorned, with a sort of punk spirit to it, it's just guitars, bass, drums and vocals with nothing to distract you from their pure and infectious grooves. There's probably only one pedal on the stage, Oumar's distortion, which adds some weight to his solos – which become trance like and epic in the live form, repeating trills hypnotically while singer Aliou Toure sounds like he's instructing us to "take it, take it take it"! Garba Toure on bass plays the straight man most of the show, strong and steady, just as he ought to be and Nathanael Dembele is a power house on the kit, with fantastic dynamics – when he wants to he pounds that snare with such ferocity it sounds like a sample that's been heavily cooked in the studio.
The night really starts to kick into gear when front-man Aliou sets his guitar aside after the first few numbers and tells the whole room he wants to get them dancing – he then proceeds to pull off some of the most buoyant, joyous dance moves I've seen and soon the whole band are beaming from ear to ear and the room is grinning back and bopping from side to side heeding Toure's instructions. He's a formidable hype man, who doesn't take long to get the whole room twisted around his finger. The night is full of tributes, the late Malian multi-instrumentalist Ali Farka Toure (any relation?) is thanked for his inspiration and there's an eyebrow raising bit of praise for women (and their cooking skills) that probably wouldn't have been so well received if it hadn't been delivered with such sincerity and such a wide smile. Aliou puts us at ease after this brief burst of sexism when he tells us that 'no man is worth a thing without women' in a sentiment that echoes the lyrics to James Brown's 'It's A Man's World'.

Their music crosses cultural borders by fusing the elements we Westerner's will be familiar with from a typical guitar based rock band (most often just a power thee-piece) with irresistable and seemingly complex grooves whose roots lie in traditional Malian dance music (I had to stop myself counting time). Their fusion of melody and energy simply can't be ignored and they've got the songs too, 'Al Hassidi Terei' begins sounding like a distant cousin of 'House Of The Rising Sun' before the rhythm kicks and and takes the verses to a place of endless bouncy tension that releases for its half-time chorus before winding up again. 'Sobour' is a foot-stomping romp of a track that stretches to epic proportions in the live setting, making full use of Oumar's special guitar playing. 'Irganda', played second to last tonight, is probably my favourite – with counter-point melodies so strong I find myself singing along despite the fact I don't know a word of Malian! There are a couple of stand out moments in the set where the band feel like they're coming to the end of a song, but instead they turn the rhythm upside down and create another unexpected twist that shakes things up and gets the room bopping anew. For the encore Aliou comes out on his own to begin a moving song for Mali, probably written during the bands exile, which showcases his own impressive guitar skills before the band joins the stage to take the song home. It's a sad moment when they announce the next song will be their last, apparently they are calling things to a close to be kind to us, as it is a Tuesday night and we all have to go and work in the morning but I'm sure most of us would gladly have called in sick tomorrow to get another half hour out of them. Songhoy Blues love Brighton and, indeed, Brighton loves them back – I swear, at the end of the night their wasn't a dry armpit in the room!

Adam Kidd

 
Twitter: twitter.com/songhoyblues

Check out the video interview we did with Songhoy when we caught up with them at The Great Escape 2015: