Beirut

The Leeds Irish Centre is a humble place, right down to the patchy fairy lights adorning the stage. Beirut seem to have a penchant for venues they see as quaint and we see as dirty.

The venue is almost suffocatingly full, which can make for a good atmosphere, however, only if the people who make up this mass are more than slightly enthusiastic. Beirut’s gypsy-folk brand of indie makes me want to sing, dance and clap my hands in a mildly drunken and unrhythmical fashion. It is quite apparent that this effect is not aroused in many other listeners. With my spirits dampened I took to tapping my foot and nodding so as not to annoy the throng of tappers and nodders.

Beirut put in a performance that was obviously well practiced, technically good and at moments verging on brilliance. These moments, however, were mere glimmers in a dying fire. The band appeared tired and played as if they were going through the motions. Although I believe this is partly due to the audience being rather quiet and not really giving anything for Beirut to work with.

Having seen Beirut earlier in the year at Glastonbury, I had particularly high expectations for this concert. I had also been looking forward to hearing their new album The Flying Club Cup performed live, yet only a few songs on the new album were played. ‘A Sunday Smile’ stood out with a quite unexpected anthem-like quality when performed live which doesn’t come across in recording. However, other songs lacked the lavishly full sound that you hear on the record and some instruments were lost because of amateurish sound engineering.

Beirut’s set list was comprised of mostly tracks off Gulag Orkstar, which seemed like a blatant attempt to revive the frankly comatosed audience. Not that this was particularly fruitful.

Beirut obviously suffered in this concert because of a number of issues; the venue being too small, an unenthusiastic audience and bad sound engineering. It seems like a case of some bad decisions and bad luck, but not a bad band.