Manu Chao: Viva Tu (digital outlets)

Although he could comfortably slip onto our world music pages, French-born Manu Chao is popular in the Western world of folk and rock for his assemblages of sounds and styles as diverse as Algerian rai, the Clash, samba, Cuban music, reggae and more.

His first band Mano Negra broke out of the world music sphere with their energetic shows and recordings. I caught them in Paris once and it was like being at a punk rock'n'roll gig with an audience as excited as one for a superstar like Prince or Springsteen.

He's long been a solo star (with the Radio Bemba Sound System band) and his Spanish roots have become more prominent in the music.

He's also multi-multilingual: a few here are in English including the very catchy Heaven's Bad Day.

If you are coming new to him he might be a hard one to understand, but think along these lines: after Joe Strummer left the Clash he became much more a world music habitué in his tastes and his albums reflected some of that. You can imagine Manu Chao and Joe sitting at one of Strummer's famous campfires passing a bottle and sharing songs with acoustic guitars – Manu's played sometimes with flamenco passion – while others tapped sticks on logs and sang along on choruses.

Something like that anyway. It's friendly music, even when it is politically pointed.

Be prepared to be as confused as you are seduced by an album which dials down from some of his more explosive songs into Latin passions, ballads and handclap songs around that late night open fire.

Different, and different is good.

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You can hear this album at bandcamp here.

It is available locally on CD and on vinyl from Southbound Records, Auckland