Ahmed Gallab has spent the last six years slowly refining and reducing the scope of his music. When the Sudanese sometimes-session musician started on his own as Sinkane, his work resembled the rustling, windswept breeze of post-rock—2008 debut Color Voice and the following year’s self-titled effort could’ve been easily mistaken for the sprawling instrumental work coming out of Chicago in the late ‘90s. But as he vacuumed up more sonic influences, the music contracted. Mars from 2012, Sinkane’s breakout effort, was an appealing mix of Afropop rhythms and dance music’s slinkier tendencies, as Gallab restrained his leg-stretching tendencies with pop-focused structures that nonetheless possessed a jammy feel. His latest, Mean Love, is his most direct and concise collection of songs yet, distilling his compositional talents and reining in any attendant looseness.
This overall trajectory isn’t dissimilar to that of the band he’s most known for contributing to, Brooklyn aesthetes Yeasayer, who made a name with distinctly proggy, expansive-sounding music before whittling down their rougher edges. But while Yeasayer have experienced a creative decline in their search for a simpler expression, Gallab continues to improve his sense of songcraft. Earlier this year, he acted as musical director for ATOMIC BOMB! The Music of William Onyeabor, a celebration of the Nigerian synth-pop pioneer that included contributions from David Byrne, Devonté Hynes, and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, among others. On Mean Love, Gallab exudes a similar sense of adventurousness, and he liberally wields Afropop influences with confidence; the cascading horns and easy, continuous beat of “New Name” resemble the hypnotic ebullience of luminaries like Tony Allen and Fela Kuti poured into a small-scale mold.
Showcasing a stylistic restlessness that works in Gallab’s favor, Mean Love’s try-anything spirit is sometimes reminiscent of the electro-pop of Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick, with Gallab’s smooth professionalism replacing Bundick’s good-natured amateurishness. More favorably, Gallab’s pleasing upper vocal register and genre-bending tendencies recall Dan Snaith, the mastermind behind the influence-inhaling Caribou project (Gallab was a live drummer for Caribou for a time) who’s proved a master in creating pop music that’s emotive, brainy, and brawny. Snaith’s airy voice tends to float over the music, and Gallab similarly hovers over the slow drumbeat and jettisoned synths of “Son”, the album’s lyrical high point. "Son" finds its creator ruminating on familial pressures and the eternal conundrum of finding a place within one’s point of geographical origin: “There’s a pressure to being your eldest/ There’s such pressure to make you the proudest...I will not forget where I came from.”
Elsewhere, Gallab tackles slow-moving funk, spaced-out psychedelic pop, and peppy tropicalia with confidence. His creative malleability is impressive, even if the results don’t always excite; in particular, a few cuts on the album’s back half (the languid title track, “Galley Boys”, the twangy closer “Omdurman”) take on countrified shapes with brushes of slide guitar, a stylistic turn that is structurally sound but not as engaging as Mean Love’s other genre excursions. It seems almost unfair, though, to criticize Gallab for the minor crime of engaging with a sound that’s not as inherently interesting as what he’s proven capable of elsewhere, as Mean Love cements his reputation as a capable musical wanderer willing to engage with a variety of sounds.
