Amadou & Mariam's new album, Folila, was released yesterday in the United States on Because Music / Nonesuch Records and was received with great critical acclaim. The album, which includes guest turns by a wide-range of artists, including Santigold, TV on the Radio, Nick Zinner, Theophilus London, Bassekou Kouyate, and others, earned great reviews from the Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Philadelphia Inquirer, Christian Science Monitor, and more, as was noted in yesterday's Nonesuch Journal.

The album track “Dougou Badia,” featuring Santigold, has been selected for The New Yorker's Listening Booth this week, which you can hear at newyorker.com. On a recent trip to New York, Amadou & Mariam performed an unplugged version of the song "Cherie" for Daily Candy, which you can watch at dailycandy.com. The couple also met up with NPR at The Shrine in Harlem to record an acoustic duo version of the song "Wily Kataso" (the album version of which features Tunde and Kyp from TV on the Radio). You can watch the performance below.

Stereogum names Folila Album of the Week, saying that "at its heart it’s a euphoric psychedelic rock album." Even with all of the contributions from the array of collaborators Amadou & Mariam have assembled for the album, "there’s one thing that dominates this time around: Amadou’s guitar. And," explains Stereogum's Tom Breihan, "that motherfucker is a beast."

And with all of its special guests and musical styles, Folila nevertheless finds "every musical influence melting seamlessly into the whole. Amadou & Mariam have fully internalized every musical idea they try out on the album, and they try out a whole lot of musical ideas. The end result is a pretty great springtime record, a fun and playful artifact from two crazily gifted pop polyglots at work."

Read the complete article on this Album of the Week at stereogum.com.

Wily Kataso