East
Harlem isn’t
a big departure from previous Beirut songs. It has the same
ramshackle horn and percussion sections as The
Flying Club Cup,
as though frontman Zack Condon had gathered together his musicians
from the street 5 minutes earlier and led them to the studio. This
gives East
Harlem the same incidental sound so charming in prior Beirut songs. Condon himself
meanwhile sings in the usual fashion too. For me he sings as though
recalling some beautiful scene from the past, sad that it is over but
glad that it occurred. It means that listening to East
Harlem, like
most Beirut songs, feels nostalgic.
Of course, similarities to prior
material aside, East
Harlem
distinguishes itself from older Beirut songs in some respects. It’d
be stale otherwise – and it is not. For one the song is more upbeat
than usual. This is because Condon isn’t singing about death as in
The Flying
Club Cup,
but a separation between lovers. He mocks his characters in his lyrics, laughing that the distance between uptown and downturn Harlem
seems to them a thousand
miles. It means that, though East
Harlem isn’t
a break from formula from Beirut, it isn’t a repetition either. He
still conjures the sense of a street musician, not begging change,
but inviting people to listen and share his memories. He still sounds
charming doing it too.
