When Souad Massi left Algeria for Paris in 1999, she carried with her a set of influences as eclectic as they were unlikely: Oum Kalthoum and Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin, classical guitar and Algerian folk poetry. Her debut solo album, Raoui (2001), went gold in France almost immediately, and the records that followed confirmed her reputation as a singular talent: a singer of rare emotional intelligence whose bittersweet voice seemed the perfect vessel for songs of exile, longing and survival.
More than two decades on, and four years since her last album Sequana, that voice remains unmistakable, but Zagate, her new album, finds Massi in a newly unguarded place. Recorded predominantly in the UK and produced…