For their third album, Beirut have retrenched from the Balkans back to Brooklyn.
In an ocean of identikit indie-rockers, the guy with the flugelhorn, operatic tenor and band more Balkan than Brooklyn was always going to stand out. Even so, it was not just novelty that won Beirut such widespread acclaim for their first two albums, Gulag Orkestra and The Flying Club Cup, released in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Here was a sound that was immediate and engaging, romantic and ambitious, exotic yet not wholly foreign. Its appeal reached corners that would normally have been indifferent if not openly dismissive to the strains of world music.
At its heart was its charming if improbable creator. Barely out of his teens, Santa Fe-born, Brooklyn-based Zach Condon was clearly some sort of a prodigy. Not only did his powerful voice seem too big for his tiny frame, but he also appeared to have a musical mastery beyond his years, arranging horns, accordions, strings and percussion in a style that evoked the gypsy bands of France and Eastern Europe, without merely imitating them.
After the one-two punch of those initial albums, Beirut took some time out, punctuated only by an underwhelming EP, in which Condon’s ethnic explorations took him to Oaxaca, Mexico.
On The Rip Tide, Beirut’s first album in almost four years, the Condon trademarks are evident. The singing is still full and fruity, those big sustained vowels recalling Jeff Buckley or Rufus Wainwright in full flight. And he has come up with more of those yearning melodies, built on simple circular chord sequences that telegraph passion and longing even when the words are indiscernible.
The instrumental accessories that gave an exotic flourish to the earlier discs remain as well, and yet these seem to have moved to a supporting rather than central role. Those fiery Balkan beats – pressed drumrolls and clattering, off-centre rhythms – while resurfacing here and there, are mostly subsumed by a more familiar four-on-the-floor.
The first single, Santa Fe, is a case in point. Where Condon previously sounded like an American indie crooner caught up in a gypsy wedding, there is now no mistaking Beirut as anything other than an American indie band, although their party may have a few far-flung guests.
Song titles such as East Harlem and Payne’s Bay also bring the geography closer to home, emphasising that Condon is living less in a Balkan state of the mind than he once did.
The Rip Tide is more refined and, in many ways, even more immediate than its predecessors. Condon has polished his hooks into bold insistent pop songs.
Yet the record suffers a self-consciousness absent from the earlier discs. It is as though, at 25, Condon no longer has the nerve to borrow so brazenly, or show off as fearlessly as he once did. So although The Rip Tide can be heard as a more mature piece of work, it is also one with less risk, and ultimately fewer rewards.
THE RIP TIDE, Beirut (Pompeii/Rhythmethod).