Beirut // Crocodile Cafe // 17 October

The show begins with warm up music from the tiny green room and a modest parade entrance. I’ve been waiting to see Beirut live since a friend sent me an urgent e-mail demanding that I purchase their album, and Tuesday’s show did not disappoint. My favorite is the guy^[f] whose major purpose is to cheerlead by dancing, jumping around, screaming howls of encouragement, rocking the tambourine and handheld percussion, and joking about the early days, before there was a stage full of musicians, when Zach just played selected parts along with a CD. The technical difficulties of Beirut‘s transition to the stage seem long behind the band, with rich and complex melodies balancing on a thrilling point between loose and well-rehearsed.

The commentary from the stage is dominated by a running tally of the indignities of being underage in a club that doesn’t want to lose its license. Spending the evening confined to the van, being escorted to the bathroom by a bouncer, not being allowed to drink during the show. Oh, the sobriety (despite claims of spending all of that time in the van chugging liquor)! The plans to hold their next show at a house, where it will be easier to break the law! This petulance is probably not surprising since the music is borne of a kid who dropped out of school multiple times and wound up a vagabond in Europe, absorbing the spirit of a ragtag band of Roma-obsessed street musicians, traveling. A few issues with authority are all part of the territory.

When he’s singing, Zach doesn’t sound a thing like a whiny twenty-year-old. His voice is big and deep and expansive beyond its years. His trumpet playing’s nothing to sneeze at either. The band’s performance is nothing short of tremendous. At any one time, there are eight or more things happening on the stage. Baritone saxophone switching to clarinet mid-song, accordion leaning into dueling ukuleles, guest violin players, doubling trumpet lines, percussion duties split between pounding on drums and tending to samplers, the action expanding into the audience. One woman keeps shouting nonsequiturs about Beirut’s popularity in New Orleans. Another remarks that the tambourine cheerleader’s rolled bandana headband look is dead sexy.

The songs are rolling and epic. Yes, it is awkward when they’re in service of the indignity of not being able to swill a beer during a drunken sailor song, but it is easy to imagine that it is the sort of music that has lifting the spirits of weary unwanted wandering hearts for centuries. Regardless, there’s no arguing with the heroic trumpet lines of “Postcards from Italy”, the synthesizer dance beat of “Scenic World”, or the mournful resiliance of “After the Curtain”. We also get to hear a few new songs: “Carousel”, from the EP they forgot to bring, a yet unrecorded “Closing Song”, and a cover (of a cover?) of the Arcade Fire’s “Brazil”. After closing with a singalong encore, we can only hope that someone bought a few beers for the van.

Aside: has the Crocodile always had cocktail service in the showroom or is this a brilliant new development?