Amadou & Mariam are featured in an interview on ABC's World News webcast with Charlie Gibson. They spoke with ABC News correspondent Dan Harris about their having met and fallen in love at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali, more than 30 years ago. They explain that the success and longevity of their relationship can be attributed, in part, to their doing what they love, creating music together.

"Music was the connection between us," Amadou tells Harris. "I fell in love with the voice."

Mariam concurs, saying that after three decades, "We don't get tired of each other. Music is what keeps us together. We are absolutely happy. You know, to be happy, you have to love each other, you have to love what you do. And that's why people love us."

Also online from ABC News is a Pitchfork video review of Welcome to Mali, Amadou & Mariam's forthcoming release. "Welcome to Mali is a brilliantly eclectic album," says Pitchfork's Joe Tangari. "One of the things that makes Amadou & Mariam appealing on a universal level is their willingness to incorporate just about any sound into their music, from hip-hop to reggae to rock. They have it all, really."

Tangari, who gave Welcome to Mali an 8.4 in his written review in Pitchfork upon the album's European release last fall, concludes in the ABC segment: "This is the kind of album that makes you feel more connected to the world you live in. Hearing so many styles of music from so many places blended so seamlessly gives one the sense that we're really not all that different from each other."

Watch the interview and the video album review at abcnews.go.com. Read Tangari's written review at pitchfork.com.

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"It’s hard to go wrong with Amadou and Mariam," says Dusted magazine's David Font-Navarrete. "[T]heir earnest efforts to craft a truly international sound has met with resounding success since their previous album, 2005’s hit Dimanche à Bamako."

The success of that Manu Chao-produced album, says Font-Navarrete, "propelled Amadou and Mariam into a lofty and well-deserved international orbit by way of a sound that ventured into experimental and atmospheric production." Even with the adventurous blend of sounds on that record and this, the writer points out that for the wider pop audience they've now come to know, their music is sure to please. "Amadou and Mariam are not likely to rub you—or anybody else—the wrong way."

"Regardless of the frames built around them by producers or the press," Font-Navarrete concludes, "Amadou and Mariam make great pop music, and their new album gives us more of it."

Read the review at dustedmagazine.com.

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The Boston Herald gives the new album an A grade. "It will be hard to outdo this one when it comes to world music album of the year," declares reviewer Nate Dow. "The blind husband-and-wife duo have produced a number of fine recordings since meeting more than 30 years ago, but none as infectious as this blend of Western and African styles that celebrates both their union and homeland of Mali. The shift to modernism is rarely done as artfully as it is here." Dow points in particular "to Amadou’s brilliant African-blues guitar and Mariam’s velvety voice" for taking center stage. Read the review at bostonherald.com.