Highlife – the genre – is a style of African music originating in Ghana, Afropop if you will, and is characterised by sharp guitar lines, West African horns and bright melodies. Highlife the band is the project of Sleepy Doug Shaw, a member of White Magic and sometime collaborator with Gang Gang Dance and Animal Collective. While his regular band might ply a trade in psych-folk, Shaw has always been open about his love for African music, and it shines through on this summery and joyful mini-LP, Best Bless.

There’s been much criticism over the years since indie acts began to absorb the Afropop influence into their music, mainly because detractors feel that some bands are taking advantage of an “in” sound and appropriating a culture that they don’t feel any real connection with. While it’s true that some acts do appear to be acting cynically with their cultural imperialism, others can defend against such chatter by pointing out that if we were to remove any African influence from modern music then we’d not be left with much at all. With Shaw and Highlife, the love of the music does seem completely genuine, and if we’re to look at his work in White Magic, the guitar sound of that band pulls from the highlife genre, and Best Bless extends the influence by completely immersing itself in the sound of West Africa.

Where bands like Extra Golden use vocalists from Africa, and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig sounds either like Peter Gabriel or Paul Simon, Doug Shaw chooses to sing in his own voice – an almost standard indie voice that mixes the Englishness of his place of birth (London) with his home of New York - and it takes a little getting used to when the music gets its cues from an entirely different continent. Once you do adjust to the contrast, there’s gold to be found in the record’s short running time. Once the false start of the short and percussive ‘War Fair’ passes, Shaw launches into the summery sound of ‘F Kenya RIP’, named after the late Ghanian musician. The track even namechecks one of Kenya’s songs, with Shaw singing “kicking the sand, Madame Zehae Ala / I hold out my hand, Madame Zehae Ala / breathe in the salt, Madame Zehae Ala”, backed with sunshine harmonies from fellow White Magic member Mira Billotte and some stunning guitar work. There’s the quick finger-picking and strumming of an acoustic guitar that verges on flamenco at times, and on top of that is effortlessly breezy and rippling electric guitar which transports us to the golden shores of Ghana’s south coast.

‘Burying Stones’ is a more conventional western song, taking the rhythms of highlife to creating a percussive, bass-heavy dance track that recalls the more straight-ahead moments of Animal Collective. ‘Tuareg Dancehall’ tells a story of a girl who’s always first to get up and dance, and sees the return of those rippling guitars, with two duelling their way down the scales, tangling and unravelling as they go. Again, there’s lovely backing from Billotte which adds a contrast to Shaw’s curiously English delivery on parts of the song.

The mini-LP ends on a change of pace with ‘Wet Palm Trees’, a slow acoustic ditty with flute and gentle harmonies, a song to play at the end of the night, as the dying embers from the post-dancehall beach fire finally begin to fade away and folks head back home. It might lack the energy of the previous tracks, but the quiet resolution to the record works.

Best Bless never sounds forced or fake, and avoids accusations of appropriation by the simple act of being genuinely in love with the sounds of highlife. It’s an uncomplicated record, full of natural charm and hopefully Highlife can follow this starter with a full album of similar delights.