Beirut

Do you remember the 5th of November? Vulpes Homosexual, aka Guy Fawkes day, took place amongst much explosive merriment last weekend. I watched fireworks from my friend Brian's pad, while enjoying a wee dram of Laphroaig Whisky and freezing my tuchus off (try to guess how long it took me googling to figure out how to correctly spell 'tuchus'... during my search I learned that the literal definition of 'bubkes' is goat droppings. Thank god for wikipedia). In the words of Allan Jardine, the tech-extraordinaire at my college who spends his days wiling away the hours in his wardrobe-lair, you will know it is November 5th because it "sounds like Beirut out there."







(watch closely for awesome transition)
Speaking of Beirut, I really like the band, Beirut. They just put out a new album last month, and it is really, really good. They are all very good -- a nice assortment of eastern european and jazz instrumentation (+ukulele!), a delightful handful of incredibly competent musicians, a lovely lady violinist, and a spectacularly talented, adorable, charismatic lead singer/songwriter. The music is a very accessible mix of gypsy traditional and indy-pop and I find it quite addictive. They've got a nice website too.

Therefore, you can imagine my disappointment when I traveled all the way to Glasgow (alone, and with a raging head-cold) to see this promising young band in concert, and they totally, totally blew. The show was held in a venue called "The Arches" which is housed in a series of connected abandoned railway tunnels across the street from Glasgow's Central Station. Merge the obvious acoustic nightmare of trying to amplify and mix a 6 piece mainly acoustic band in a tunnel with the fact that the band is young and new to touring, they are not yet to the point where they can bring their own sound guy on tour (I HOPE they weren't using their own sound guy...), and whoever was doing sound at this event was obviously both deaf and slightly retarded (fetal alcohol syndrome, maybe?), and you have the makings for a miserable, cacophonous nightmare.



Here is my advice:
1. Hire a sound guy (or girl) who understands acoustics, mixing, amplification, has an ear for music, knows how to kill feedback...
2. Turn down the fucking horns and teach the horn players to pull their punches (for example, place the bell of the horn farther away from the mic when you want the sound to be softer...)
3. This lead singer/songwriter, Zach Condon, has a totally beautiful singing voice, but seeing the lot in concert made me realize how amateur his use of it is. He's using the same vocal style on every song, sort of giving it all he's got so that what he's got becomes a lot less impressive than if he sort of sang it straight, and then broke out with the awesomeness in a more controlled fashion. In other words, Zach's vocalizations need to mature.
4. Ok, I know the concert has turned out to be a total fucking disaster, but at least 'pretend' to be having a good time up there. You've got a sold-out crowd of adorable Glaswegian teenagers singing along to your shit. You're like, barely out of high school and you're touring Europe. That's AWESOME. Act like it. Geez.

As you can see, in addition to thinking I know something about film criticism, I also am apparently beginning to think I know something about music criticism. For shame. I'm going to go make some art now, to wash the critic-stink off of me. But yeah, if you're thinking of seeing Beirut in concert, my advice is to, I dunno, wait a year or two, unless they're playing a really small, well-run club with excellent sound techs and a good community vibe (for example, I'm sure they'd be great if they were playing The Vera Project in Seattle).

No, I take that back. Go see them if you want to. Support the band. They're super-promising, and I don't regret forking out for the concert. I just wish it hadn't sucked. I'll probably go see them again next time. And hopefully write an awesome blog about how much their live show has improved.