| Beirut – The Rip Tide |
| Written by Derek Harrison | |||
| Friday, 23 September 2011 15:58 | |||
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Beirut has always been a pop band. The Rip Tide is not Beirut's pop album, it's the album where Beirut (the pop band) stops pretending not to be a pop band. The keyboard (sorry, the euphonium) and percussion loops of "Santa Fe" are pop through and through. Zach Condon's voice is the sole melodic component of the song, there are no Balkan instruments or Eastern European scales, and the song is, notably, named after an American city.
The Rip Tide is the third full-length Beirut album, released August 30th, 2011. The opening track, A Candle's Fire, opens with the accordion playing a distinctly pop chord progression. It's a distinctly Beirut quality to sound like pop music no matter what instrument is playing it. The extended intro features a military horn arrangement, supported by a marching snare drum and strummed ukulele. Condon's vocals have no pretence, sung with that throaty proficiency and lack of interest typical of indie folk. The band plays by rote, hitting all the right notes in all the right places but without bringing any life to the music.
The album's lead single, "East Harlem," another example of Beirut's musical movement to America, is another tired pop song with all the same problems as "Santa Fe" – a 1-2-3-4 metronome rhythm on the keys and a bored vocal performance pushed to low in the mix. "Goshen" takes it one step further, opening with a 1-4-5 progression on the solo piano. Condon sing a descending melody with that sort of fluttery showboating expected of pop ballads. Pretty harmonies, military snare and three chords supported by the horn section help to keep this song from going anywhere. Condon repeats the same melody 10-second long melody over the same three chords for the entirely of the 3:20 running time.
"Payne's Bay" actually has some content. The band still plays like they're a metronome, but the introduction is full of melody and the structure is unpredictable, leading with Heather Trost guesting on the violin, followed by what sounds like a verse in 3/4 time but makes way after less than a minute and a half to a gradual build-up in 4/4 to the climax at the end of the song with the group repeating "Headstrong, today I've been headstrong" like they're trying to convince themselves. It feels like the close of a disappointing first half, but on the bright side it makes way for a much stronger back half of the album.
The title track to The Rip Tide sounds at the same time like an opener, a centerpiece, an epic and a closer. This is a compliment. The emotional content of the melody and the evocativeness of the Devotchka-esque arrangement, once again featuring Trost on the violin, is thick and effective. The mix is spacious and has a landscape of its own. Once again Condon's voice is too low in the mix, as if his lyrics weren't already hard to make out with the way he slurs in voice in favour of tonality rather than definition.
A lyric from the next track, "Vagabond," is the perfect example of why the lyrics aren't the important part in Beirut's music: the line "and I am lost and not found" shows why you shouldn't strain your ears trying to figure out the words. The song is refreshing, however in its abandonment of the metronome rhythm which plagues so-called "indie" music. The arrangement has momentum, but still the playing is a tired.
The penultimate track, "The Peacock" is another pop ballad. A quick song, at 2:26, Condon is supported only by the euphonium and some strong harmonies for most of the running time, until the horns back up the singers in their repeating of the final line "And he's the only one who knows the words," which could easily be Condon singing about himself. This is the strongest melody on the album and would have been better served with a more supportive arrangement.
Ukulele and glockenspiel open the closer Port of Call, one of the strongest tracks. Condon is at his best here, singing like he means it for the first time and strumming the ukulele in 3/4 with clear purpose. "Be fair to me, I may drift for a while" he sings, unaware that his music is doing just that on The Rip Tide. The album drops the Balkan gimmick and lets the songs stand on the strength of their own two feet. Unfortunately, most of the songs fail without the fancy window dressing, but the ones that succeed leave some hope for Beirut's next outing.
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