Rise

Format

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  POMP03Long Player  £16.00

Label

Pompeii Records

Beirut

The Rip Tide

‘The Rip Tide’, Beirut’s third full-length album, has been a long time coming. Beirut’s last LP, the critically acclaimed ‘The Flying Club Cup’, was released in 2007, and since then we’ve only had sporadic samplings of frontman and songwriter Zach Condon’s music, such as contributions to charity albums and 2009′s Double-EP ‘March Of The Zapotec/Holland’. But yet the band have been playing new and unreleased live material constantly throughout these few years, and it is as a direct product of this that we, finally, have a new Beirut album.

And suffice to say that the wait has paid off. At the risk of jumping ahead to what should rightfully be at the end of a review, ‘The Rip Tide’ is damn near perfect.

While Beirut previously drew on a whole range of foreign music influences and geographic inspiration, this to me is the first time that they have truly emerged with a sound all their own and completely distinctive to them. This album is certainly a bit more orientated towards pop music than we have become accustomed to from Beirut, but you can still sense the band’s past in everything they do. You can’t help but get the sense that everything Beirut has done up to now has been leading to ‘The Rip Tide’, which functions perfectly as a distillation of everything that is so great about the band as well as a progression in their musical style.

Tracklist

• 01. A Candle’s Fire
  02. Santa Fe
  03. East Harlem
  04. Goshen
  05. Payne’s Bay
  06. The Rip Tide
  07. Vagabond
  08. The Peacock
  09. Port of Call