The Buzz
What other critics have been saying about Beirut's 'The Riptide'
The Rip Tide is maybe a breakup record, an album about falling out of love, but I suspect that even those traces of sadness and bitterness are romantic gestures, and that it might actually be an album about falling in love with falling out of love. Or something like that. I guess that home is where we all want to be, ultimately, but it's not an easy place to find. As a representation of how it feels to find yourself helplessly adrift, The Rip Tide simultaneously strikes a nerve and soothes it; that's a pretty old trick, but Beirut have done it with the right mixture of solipsism and grace to bring the feelings flooding back again.
- Tiny Mix Tape
The Rip Tide is the first Beirut record to depart from that common thread of yearning and in doing so, opens the doors for listeners to glimpse Condon and co. at a much more personal level than as some admirable traveling troubadour. “Santa Fe”, for example, takes its title from the town Condon grew up in and in its bouncy synth rhythm, perfectly demonstrates one of the records most terrific surprises; The Rip Tide is also the first Beirut album to fully embrace the pop sensibilities Condon so deftly displayed in songs like "Scenic World" and nurtured through his side project, Realpeople.
- Sputnik Music
The Rip Tide's refined title-track is the longest on here at four-and-a-half minutes, yet lyrically it consists of little more than a pair of repeated lines concerning a house, a rolling tide, and loneliness. The pleasure in Beirut's music has always largely been in what it evokes – a kind of melancholy tempered with optimism and sometimes celebration. And it evokes marvellously here: whatever current Condon found himself caught up in that led to the creation of these songs, it's one you feel he's happy to coast a while yet.
- BBC.co.uk
That this is both Beirut's deepest and most instantly enjoyable album is obvious. Condon has left the bedroom where he handcrafted 'Gulag' behind. He's no longer a promising indie auteur, but the leader of a very good band. Yet, remarkably, 'The Rip Tide' retains the distinctiveness of those earlier records. Its quiet magnificence is destined to win over a lot of doubters.
- Clash Music
Fans of long standing might actually find The Rip Tide a bit too restrained now that Beirut sound more assured and less like a tipsy string quartet stumbling around an accordion factory, egged on by a hopeless romantic in his lowest register.
- The Observer
