Beirut

Beirut spun out of an easily discernible liking for Neutral Milk Hotel, but quickly took to operating on its own terms—or at least those of divinely talented bandleader Zach Condon. The group’s strange and tuneful melding of gruff indie rock with haunted Eastern European folk found fine form on 2007’s The Flying Club Cup, and returned with March Of The Zapotec/Holland, a 2009 double EP of brassier extrapolations on the Beirut sound (and some less brassy home recordings credited to Condon’s side-project Realpeople). The band’s third full-length, The Rip Tide, moves beyond the narrow themes of previous records, instead blending and building from everything the 25-year-old Condon attempted previously.

Updated 09/07/2011