Best Album Of The Past Twelve Months

If human evolution had taken this long, we'd still be monkeys. Already celebrated for their intensely engrossing live shows, the Baboons have neglected to record, opting at one point to put their efforts into a video but never making their mark on disc. Patience paid off this year with the arrival of their seven-tune mix of Miami influences, which captures the group's lively originality while also reflecting elements of Angélique Kidjo, Bob Marley, and Santana, with a few touches of Esquivel for good measure. The marathon jams that leave live crowds happily exhausted come across within the ten-plus minutes of "The Temple" and "Made in the Shade," which runs about eight minutes. But the album also contains enough dynamics to obliterate any tendency toward tediousness. Diverse, birring, and tropical as an August day on Virginia Key, Evolution is pure Miami and pure pleasure.