It took me an unusually long time to warm up to Anatomic, the latest from the re-renamed Afro Celt Sound System (who had dropped the “Sound System” from their name on their previous album, to the dismay of some longtime fans). It’s not that it’s not good music – it most certainly is – but this group is renowned for knocking down so many boundaries of style and genre and categories in music that, by comparison, bits of Anatomic seem tame – particularly after the rousing entry that was Seed. This may be a case where the band’s long term fans, the folks who get to hear and appreciate the album tracks and not just the singles, will love it, but listers who sample the group more casually may not get it.
There’s no one common thread that ties the strongest Anatomic songs together – “Beautiful Rain” is an almost hypnotic song with gentle male vocals, “Dohl Dogs” is a rousing instrumental number with a solid wall of polyrhythmic percussion, and the title track, also an instrumental, hearkens back to the System’s best Celtic-heavy fusion dance numbers. The album opens strong with “When I Still Needed You”, and though it’s a 
slower track, I like “Mother” as well. But some of the other tracks just couldn’t hold my attention – again, they’re not bad music, but they’re strong candidates for background music.
Which may actually be what devotees of this band are looking for, for all I know. At any rate, there’s good stuff on here, but it’s an uneven listen to plow all the way through the whole album.
- When I Still Needed You (8:16)
- My Secret Bliss (7:04)
- Mojave (10:35)
- Senè (Working The Land) (5:59)
- Beautiful Rain (4:59)
- Anatomic (5:24)
- Mother (6:29)
- Dohl Dogs (6:25)
- Drake (6:04)
Released by: RealWorld
Release date: 2005
Total running time: 61:15
