Little Beirut - High Dive

Genre pop Publisher self-released External Links Little Beirut Website

def. Port-land, geographic name: a city in the North-Western United States that has everything: year-round snowboarding, rock climbing, farmer's markets, an art scene, upscale dining and Little Beirut.

In a musical atmosphere that is so heavy with mediocre bands promoting fellow mediocre bands to fill the radio waves with an amalgamation of homogenous song[s?] and whose albums contain a monotonous string of songs that sound so much alike that it could easily be one long track, it's refreshing to see a self-released album garner so much attention. Admittedly, their sound, when looking at the songs individually, isn't particularly original, but Little Beirut plays pop-rock well and varies which influences they draw on from track to track. High Dive carries its charm in the fact that the band borrows a bit from every pop-rock band playing on the radio and joins that with twee pop which manages to give pop-rock sincerity. From song to song on this album you could say "Hey that sounds like..." but rarely find two songs on the album that could be mistaken for one another.

I've got good news for you and bad news for you. Bad news: If you do not like the Kaiser Chiefs (especially "The Angry"), you will not like "Acid Wash Soul." Move along. Good news: The rest of the songs on this disc are completely different from "Acid Wash Soul." The track begins with a modern Brit-pop flavor that makes you instinctively reach over and turn up the song. Drums with a syncopated rhythm switch throughout the song to counter the pacing of the guitar and the xylophone. Yes, xylophone. Little Beirut has managed create pop-rock xylophone music and it's actually pretty good, the buoyant tone of the xylophone pairs well with song's encouraging lyrics. "Acid Wash Soul" contains the best lyrics on the album: "Once I had a job / once I was so old / some suburban mob / Acid washed my soul." Outside of the context of the up-tempo music, the lyrics could read as trite, but the words speak of the general malaise that most people feel after graduating college and entering into the work force. For those years between 24 and 30, most people plod through life existing rather than living. After a few years, you come to the realization that your extensive knowledge of "G" following "F" and coming before "H" in that filing cabinet just isn't going to do it anymore. You stop trying to achieve someone else's vision of success and become "a dead man come alive."

High Dive seems to embody the Portland-raised band's surroundings. Each track different from the other; one song meets the listener with a bit of an edge (Rock 'n' Roll Joe), another with a touch of the "crunchy" (Saturday Market), a few more with the naiveté of raw emotion and most of all, High Dive ends in rain.