The Rip Tide

Unlike previous Beirut albums, there's precious little evidence of Zach Condon's cosmopolitan taste in music here. Gone are the mariachi flourishes, Balkan brass stomping and Parisian café squeezeboxes. Sure, the brass section is present and correct, and there are vaguely martial-sounding drums. But they recall not the anarchic racket of Fanfare Ciocărlia, or the post-Pogues rabble-rousing of Gogol Bordello, but the ubiquitous ukulele-strumming likes of Noah & the Whale or Bombay Bicycle Club.

It doesn't help that Condon's voice often sounds like a much less fruity Neil Hannon (he of the Divine Comedy fame), a man who knew how to write a good chorus. Good choruses are in short supply here: these songs only have one idea; it might get louder or quieter, but it never really changes. When the washes of trumpet kick in over neat-and-tidy acoustic guitar jingling, it's hard not to think of building society adverts, or the music that soundtracks idents on TV channels such as BBC4 or Dave. While many of Beirut's peers, such as A Hawk & A Hacksaw, or even Laura Marling, have radically upped their game on succeeding albums, The Rip Tide sounds like a conservative and dull step backwards. Only ‘Payne's Bay’ catches your attention, when the crashing cymbals and parping brass gesture at the sort of thrills a good Gypsy brass band is capable of. But even that's for only half the song.