announced new album The Rip Tide

In early June 2011, amid touring the United States, Beirut announced that their newest album, The Rip Tide , which had been recorded the previous winter in upstate New York, was to be released on August 30. The band simultaneously released the single ” East Harlem ” (first recorded on Live at the Music Hall of Williamsburg ), with the B-side “Goshen”. The album was recorded, managed, and released under Condon’s own Pompeii Records. Reviewers and fellow musicians have noted that, unlike the prior albums which drew heavily on foreign music from Mexico, France, the Balkans, etc., this one has shown Beirut with its own, more pop-oriented sound; saying, “what emerges [on The Rip Tide ] is a style that belongs uniquely and distinctly to Beirut, one that has actually been there all along.” One reviewer noted that “the Euro influences [of Beirut’s previous albums] are still there, but the presiding spirit is old-fashioned American pop.” This album also differs from Beirut’s previous albums in that the music was recorded as a band playing together rather than laying down individual tracks one at a time, though the lyrics were only added by Condon after all the music had been recorded.