The world-music revolution is complete: Barthelemy Attisso is officially the new Hank Marvin. The bespectacled lawyer, coaxed back into the studio and on the road after nearly two decades doing a proper job, is surely the guitar hero destined to plug the gap left by the Shadows and Dire Straits's Mark Knopfler.
The steaming Empire is packed with 30- and 40-somethings, perhaps the pop and rock fans who gave up on the music business about the time it abandoned them, perhaps a few dentists and teachers with Stratocaster dreams. The sweet harmonies, simple vamps and riffs of Orchestra Baobab are not quite the stuff of Hornby-ish obsession, but they leave the showbiz kids - the Wills and the Robbies - looking like office juniors.
Amid the genial student-union ambience of crushed plastic glasses and jiggling backpacks, this feels like an everyday rock show, with smoke, lights and the standard bad bass sound favoured by such venues, yet the 10-piece Baobab puts on a well-rehearsed, varied and engaging show. They never give us a chance to get bored, cooking up a Cuban mambo in one song, hinting at the high life in another, and crafting an original take on dub that leaves space for Attisso's best wah-wah-enhanced solos.
Every 1970s band had its reggae number and Baobab are still very much a band of that time, reconstituted and revived for a market that's hungry for music without too many additives. Younger Senegalese stars may dazzle but Baobab give out a warm glow. Sax player Issa Cissokho does some honky rock'n'roll grandstanding but is at his best with the snakier melodies, such as the beguiling intro to Hommage à Tonton Ferrer.
Lead vocals are swapped between singers, mainly Rudy Gomis and timbales player Balla Sidibe, with startling falsetto from Assane Mboup. Rhythm guitarist Latfi Ben Geloune does sterling work, delivering some nifty footwork with alto sax player Mountaga Koite. The rhythm team always produces a great groove: nothing spectacular, but always solid and uplifting.
It's entirely to do with the way they play together, and in this respect they resemble some groups of a previous generation: the Band, War, the Doobie Brothers. Their signature is in the way everything locks together, the different vocal textures - and the distinctive good-humoured twang of Attisso.
