Five years ago Beirut’s Zach Condon released Gulag Orkestrar, a debut that was both world-weary and precociously wise. It was an impressive feat for the 19-year-old, who recorded the album’s lush arrangements alone inside his bedroom in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Gulag Orkestrar proudly displayed its Eastern European influences, and the records that followed flaunted his passport as well: 2007′s The Flying Club Cup looked to French vocal pop, while Mexican wedding and funeral music inspired 2009′s March of the Zapotec EP.

But if Condon’s past albums were expressions of worldliness, The Rip Tide wants to shut the world out. “This is the house where I can be alone/ Be unknown now,” he sings on the title track. Where once, on songs like “Postcards from Italy” or “A Sunday Smile,” his instruments of choice — violins, horns, ukulele — were bright and gliding, choreographed like dancers rather than arranged, here they sway and drift. Only the final song “Port of Call” demonstrates the same urgency of discovery (of a new sound, new location) that his songwriting once betrayed. Despite the continental references, Condon’s melodies always felt familiar. Now they feel like they’re at their purest; if he sounds less excited, it’s… read more »