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BEIRUT: The Flying Club Cup [Ba Da Bing]

It’s been only a year and a half since Beirut’s debut was released to gushing praise, followed by tours of Europe, Russia and even Turkey. The worldly sensibility so inherent in Gulag Orkestar found a home wherever the then-20-year-old Zach Condon and his merrily melancholy troupe performed. All this led Condon to move to Paris, which has no doubt influenced The Flying Club Cup. The album serves as a musical travelogue through various French cities and deals with the country’s rich tradition of music, fashion and culture. Condon has also enlisted the help of an eight-piece band instead of going it almost entirely alone as he did on Gulag Orkestar. However, it doesn’t take long for Beirut’s characteristic waltz tempos, minor-key dirges and brass sections—not to mention Condon’s voice, a cross between Thom Yorke and Dean Wareham—to return. Musically, things have expanded a bit; “In The Mausoleum” uses a piano riff that might’ve been pulled from a ’50s-era jazz LP and tops it with Middle Eastern fiddle insinuations. “Cherbourg” seems to waft out of a 19th-century Paris salon despite its juxtaposition of waltz-time accordion and displaced Latin percussion. This album, like its predecessor, is stunning. If there’s a concern, it has less to do with Beirut’s musical path and more to do with the fact that, after such a startling debut in a similar mold, it’s going to be harder for The Flying Club Cup to matter. [www.badabingrecords.com]

—Bruce Miller