During his previous releases, Beirut’s Zach Condon came across like some sort of musical Relic Hunter, intent on museum-ing everything from the Balkan folk heard on 2006‘s Gulag Orkestar to the French chanson of 2007’s The Flying Club Cup or Mexican brass of 2009’s March Of The Zapotech EP. If he wasn’t singing about spending nights with prostitutes from Marseille or sending postcards from Italy, he was titling his songs ‘Bratislava’, ‘Nantes’, ‘Venice’ or ‘The Rhineland.’ Even the album’s artwork featured sepia-tinged photographs- no doubt lifted from the archives of some outlying Post-War image collection.
The music was great, for sure- but it did all just feel that little bit impersonal; especially coming from a bedroom-stewing American youngster with stage fright.
If Zach ‘not being his own man’ was a problem for Beirut though, it seems ’The Rip Tide’ has emphatically addressed it. The cover is conspicuously plain; whilst the whole album feels like a singer dropping masks and revealing himself. ‘Left a bag on bones/ A trail of stones/ For me to find my way home’ his voice cartwheels at the beginning of ’Vagabond’- and, although the distinctive use of brass and strings remain, it’s hard not to argue that that’s exactly what has happened.
Instead of those European cities of before; here we have ‘Santa Fe‘, ‘East Harlem’ and ’Payne’s Bay’- all much closer to home. Indeed the latter, ‘Santa Fe’, is actually his hometown; and is positively electro by Beirut’s usual uke-hugging standards- it’s pop hooks and voltaic flourishes make it more a ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ celebration than a ‘Ghost Town‘ style lament.
In fact, there’s little doubting that this is Beirut’s most pop-orientated and uplifting release to date. ‘East Harlem’ (’another rose wilts in East Harlem’) bounces along brilliantly; whilst the waltzing, fairground ride-ish ’headstrong today, I am headstrong’ refrain at the end of ’Payne’s Bay’ is vintage Beirut. But even the more plaintive moments succeed here: the beautiful ‘Goshen’ (‘you’re on in five, it’s time to rise or fall’) sounds like the sort of piano-driven chamber pop Antony And The Johnson’s have made careers out of, and the sparse Bon Iver-esque ‘The Peacock’ shows an impressive lyrical maturity that wasn‘t necessarily in evidence before.
Unhappily, there’s only 9 tracks here- with a total playing time not much exceeding half an hour. But no one should feel short-changed by this album. The Riptide is clearly Beirut’s most coherent, developed and accomplished work yet. [Rating: 4]
