Recap Beirut at Turner Hall

Figuring out Beirut can be a little puzzling. On paper, the sound that Zach Condon and his bandmates specialize in—a kind of soundtrack-ready melding of sensitive indie rock and brassy world music—seems tailor-made for Stuff White People Like. But in practice, it’s hard to avoid being taken in by the band’s emotive songwriting and unique sound. In a similarly contradictory way, Beirut’s albums (starting with the astonishingly assured 2006 debut, Gulag Orkestar) almost demand repeat listens, but also eventually start to sound a bit cloying. Strangely, it’s just as easy to swoon over the band as it is to roll your eyes at it.

Live, Beirut inspires much the same response. Its style—a sort of Soviet Bloc mariachi-folk—is warm and rich, but what starts off sweeping and heartbreaking can turn underwhelming in a matter of minutes, and then switch back just as quickly. It’s an odd effect, at least in part produced by the way Condon and company always seem even-keeled, leaving the audience to fill in the emotional rise and fall itself. The band delivers the songs passionately and fully, but also with a restraint that seems to make no room for improvisation or surprise. This means that seeing Beirut in concert ends up feeling a lot like listening to Beirut at home, which would be a bigger problem were the original material not of such a high caliber.

The sold-out crowd at last night’s Turner Hall show (we weren’t joking—white people really like Beirut) mirrored the band’s measured tone. The audience paid rapt attention in a curiously serious way that seemed, for the most part, to preclude actually dancing or releasing of excitement in any physical way—almost as if the cinematic nature of the music instilled the detachment inherent in watching a film. The energy level rose perceptibly during the encore, but the crowd only feigned cutting loose. While Beirut lacks dynamism, it does have a certain presence, created by its unusual instrumentation (pop music needs more tubas) and by simple yet evocative lighting. Only by turns was the show as effective as it had the potential to be, but the quality of the music and the skill involved in executing it onstage was clear. In those finer moments, Beirut’s enigmatic charms were impossible to deny.