Orchestra Baobab @ The Picture House, 5 Apr

With savvy young Brooklynites paying homage to Afro-beat and seasoned acts like Youssou N’Dour and Amadou & Mariam finally gaining crossover success, Orchestra Baobab, the original sub-Saharan pop group, could hardly have timed their comeback better. The Senegalese band took a 15-year hiatus when their pomp petered out, but now they play with the renewed confidence that their latest album Made In Dakar has granted them. The nine-piece outfit graft Cuban beats onto an African sound world, most evident in the Wolof Griot singing style brilliantly performed tonight by Assane Mboup. Of the stage-filling clan, saxophonist Issa Cissokho is the most diverting as a grinning, gesturing showman, while bespectacled guitarist Barthélémy Attisso weaves graceful arpeggios in the unassuming way he practiced law during the fallow years. Although it can at times sound like the glitzy background music it was designed to be (at Dakar’s swish Baobab club), when they reel off their latest recordings they show that reformed supergroups can sometimes be more entertaining second time around.