Beirut The Rip Tide. As obsolete as warships in the baltic. Wishing she could call him heartache but that's not a boy's name. Hello stranger, the stranger I've become, I've become an air raid. I am positively thrilled over the news of a possible Prefab Sprout record appearing this autumn and so as you no doubt recognized those were Prefab Sprout quotes without quotations. It is my Apollinaire impression. And isn't part of the charm of Prefab Sprout his electrifying dramatization of the mundane and petty into something effortlessly gorgeous? Apollinaire might approve, what were his feelings over the English anyhow? I don't mean to slight Beirut. He's lovely, really. He's got that silly less than taut baby fat that migrates seasonally from his face to his pectorals and back when the solstice strikes his silhouette. Eva Mendes is a Smiths fan and loves Manchester. It's true. I read it online. Accordion, this is the Beirut on Magnetic Fields album. I've discussed, previously, my desire for bands to become active partisans. I would like them to stop getting sympathetic tattoos and instead to adopt arms and join the battle on their preferred side and after the experience then write a passionate record about their experiences. Beirut would have served in the the Popular Front obviously, in the Red Army, on the Long March, they would caress their Mausers all day and in the evening exhale their traumas into their lovely little accordion squeezed pop songs. Beirut have a theoretically old soul. The music feels antiqued. fIt has passion in spite of its refinement and elegance. They could only be American, or French. Second track, more Magnetic Fields-y pop music. This is the most "pop" Beirut album thus far. At this point in the continuum he must be looking for some sort of remuneration for his efforts. He must be 25 by now? Ancient by rules of the pop game, a guest spot opening for GaGa, a television appearance on the view where he endorses Anthony Weiner for IMF chairmanship and a halftime spot at the super bowl. The world is his. It's a lovely record. Just terrifically lovely. But what of the baby fat? The repeating motif here reminds me of Ride's Time Machine. Is that unlikely? The seventies keyboard riff that adds a sense of rustication to the efforts, always his voice is rustic and there are the flugelhorns and the martial drumbeat. It's all eminently posh. Third track, accordions wheeze, urban landscapes painted in the background by field recordings and atmosphere and a tender mid-tempo stroll. He writes pastoral captions for musical postcards. It is all very evocative of time passed, of a simpler ethos, of a commitment only to the passion of the vision. I've just finished a biography of Tristan Tzara and he's rather unimportant in the greater scheme of things, isn't he. Dada was a lark. His championing of Rimbaud as the bringer of sophistication to the benighted continent is a laff, and the idea that the work of art itself was less important than the undirected thought that was its genesis seems to lead to a world where nothing matters except for the ephemerality of dreams and undirected thought. Art is born in the mouth. The Dead C would appeal to Tristan Tzara and yet the rest of us know how absolutely dreadful the Dead C really are in reality. fourth track now, piano, a ballad, a California pop song. It is all well thought out and prepared. The Magnetic Fields have the Dada Polka, Beirut have their mexican folk songs and their panoply of horns and sympathies for the weak. Just now a climax is achieved with the registered drumbeat, the melancholy horns and his voice so tenderly offered. Next track. Payne's Bay, a geographical reference? Ah, I've googled, Barbados. Perhaps a memoir of his trip to Barbados with his super model girlfriend where she travelled to recover from her debut at fashion week with baby Beirut in the front row taking photographs with his instamatic. This is beautiful. The last full Beirut record was more thematically timid, each track had a softness and here, on the new record, there is a more symptomatic boldness, a greater use of dynamism and musical heft. A female voice has joined him, his voice is so intensely doleful and when twinned with his glittering carnivalesque ballads it is inspiring and romantic. I don't mind the baby fat. Next track, more pop, a wooden block, pianos, strings in excess, drama in perfect measure. There is an element of ambition in all of this tiny pastoral symphonies. Each vignette a resplendent monument to the beauty of the human experience. I might comment on the lyrics but it feels as if this is the music of the working man, this is the music to be played on the front lines against the storm troopers of the republican party who want to deny you a comfortable retirement attainable at 52 years old. This is the rallying cry of resistance against those who would deny a bureaucrat's right to have sexual relations with an african hooker in a 3,000 dollar per night suite. These are the battles to be documented by the emotions spilled forth in the wake of Beirut's pop masterworks piped through loudspeakers in the tent cities filled with children with trust funds and keys to their Audi's parked overnight in a two hour parking space. These are the times that create lasting art. They might. My recent laments have expressed dismay over the damage that comparative wealth has wrought on independent music. Indiepop is less a revolt of the young and more a "gap year". Something to fill the resume while attending prestigious universities as a legacy enrollee before taking that job at Goldman Sachs. I love this album and while I am completely unserious as a revolutionary because I believe the ideal president is the one elected on the platform where he claims he doesn't have any answers to the problems but that he knows that most government solutions actually exacerbate the problems they attempt to remedy and so he's gonna put the entire place up for sale and go fishing instead. But we have this need for a messiah. Obviously the current occupant is a born mediocrity. More of the same is likely to follow. Perhaps if instead of getting fair trade tattoos if Chris Martin exhorted self reliance and freedom from government regulatory tyranny from the stage we might see the light instead of a future of narcissistic darkness. The Peacock, an intermission, a gently rumbling hum and his plaintive voice over multiple tracks. Nice. Last track. A ukulele, twinkles, an extended intro and his poetic ear for writing lyrics that seem more profound and amplify his effect as a storyteller and wrap the listener in a warm cocoon of collective inspiration. I really do think Beirut are one of the greatest bands on the planet. I will love them forever, honestly. Applause.