Up until now, Beirut has always held a special place in my heart. Their first two albums rank among my favorites of the past decade. Their French- and Balkan-inspired sound distinguishes them from many others in the contemporary alternative music scene today. I listened to their songs countless times in my high school days. On numerous occasions, I've spent hours online downloading any unreleased demos I could find, some of which are now amongst my favorite Beirut tracks.
But there's something missing in their latest release.
"The Rip Tide," released on August 2, feels bereft of novelty or adaptation. On the surface, it's quite enjoyable. It's easy on the ears as it ventures through a range of moods, it employs innumerable horn and string arrangements (as expected in any Beirut release), and it leaves intact the illustrious tenor of front man and founder Zach Condon. Like its predecessors, this latest album combines European flavors with electronic elements, though not always successfully. One standout track is the album's second song, "Sante Fe," a title derived from Condon's hometown. It's a glistening pop tune underscored by a bouncing synthesizer. The song is also accompanied by a darkly strange music video directed by Sunset Television.
But on first listen of the LP's fifth track, "Payne's Bay," I was tickled by that odd sensation that I had heard something similar to it before. I started scanning through my iTunes until I finally found its progenitor. As it turned out, "Payne's Bay" was not just reminiscent of another Condon song, but, in certain ways, replicated it. The song I had in mind was the first on an unreleased album entitled "The Joys of Losing Weight" by The Real People, a moniker Condon used in his later teenage years for his experiments with electronic music.
So here we have Condon, on his third major release, using material from the outtakes of his youth. Yet it is not the first time Condon has done this. His last release with Beirut before "The Rip Tide," the "March of the Zapotec/Holland" EP, contained previously-recorded Real People tracks.
It certainly makes one wonder about what has become of Condon's creative prowess since he was hospitalized for extreme exhaustion and stress during a recent tour of Europe.
Even the lead single on "The Rip Tide," "East Harlem," has been in Beirut's repertoire since early 2009. This song, which the group recently played on David Letterman, only has two verses. (This may not be an enormous issue; some of the simplest songs we hear turn out to be our favorites.)
As a result, "The Rip Tide" really only has seven songs, 25 minutes of what I believe to be "new material." To put this into perspective, consider how fellow alternative superstars, Arcade Fire, released a CD in 2010 containing 16 songs of previously unheard material. (Also consider the fact that the same release won the Grammy for Album of the Year.)
One may plead for quality, not quantity, and I truly do enjoy the quality of Beirut's auditory aesthetic. From the opening Balkan fervor of their debut, the "Gulag Orkestar," to the dramatic French chanson of "Nantes," Beirut has drawn from the world over for inspiration. Even then, Condon has been running short on lyrical inspiration. Off "The Flying Club Cup," "Nantes" and "Cherbourg" feature the lines, "It's been a long time, long time now / since I've seen you smile," not once, not twice, but six times.
Perhaps Condon thrives most when he oohs and ahhs an accompaniment to his French horn. But this introduces a bigger question: can a band ignore lyrical content in favor of sound?
In the past, I've criticized the group Dr. Dog for creating music—with the appropriate harmonies, structures, and melodies—made with the unequivocal intention to its influences in '60s pop-rock (the Beatles, The Hollies, etc.) or early '90s lo-fi (Guided by Voices and Pavement, among others). I've always felt that they weren't writing with surprises, let alone pathos.
One could also certainly complain that Beirut suffers from the same
problem, but Condon's story indicates that there is more to the group's music than meets the eye. After dropping out of school at age 16, Condon traveled to Europe and fell in love with the work of foreign musicians like Goran Bregovic and Jaques Brel. Under their influence, he constructed a sound that was alien to many alternative listeners.
Today, there aren't a lot of popular musicians that sound like Beirut, at least in this country. But there sure are a lot of bands that sound like Dr. Dog. While Condon struggles to continually produce tracks rooted in a deep foreign musical nostalgia, Dr. Dog continues to pump out full albums, perhaps because the band's chief influences are a lot safer and closer to home.
Has Condon stretched his influences too thin? Do his enigmatic voice and complicated arrangements conceal an underlying lack of substance? I'll leave that for you to decide.
One last thing that struck me about "The Rip Tide": the album cover. On "Gulag Orkestar," there was a beautiful photograph of two women sitting on a car in the German countryside—a reference to Beirut's European influences. The French-inspired "The Flying Club Cup" was fronted by an old sepia tone photo of a French woman standing at the edge of an oceanfront road. Even "March of the Zapotec/Holland" gave us a hint into the album's retrospective content with a cover portrait of Condon.
On the front of "The Rip Tide," we are left with nothing but a beige background and the name of the band and the album, not all that different from an old, abandoned book, a marked departure from the band's previous covers. I see this as yet another matter open to interpretation.