Music Review: No No No

After more than four years of relative inactivity, it only took a couple weeks of studio recording for Beirut to put down not even half an hour’s worth of material for their new album, “No No No.” The rushed recording shows in the abbreviated nature of the of the album, in addition to its failure to develop or build off of Beirut’s last album, 2011’s “The Rip Tide.”

Fans who are looking for the eastern European and Mexico-tinged world pop of Beirut’s earlier albums, including “Gulag Orkestar” and “The Flying Cup Club,” will be sorely disappointed as frontman and mastermind Zach Condon abandons almost all of these influences, save for the occasional horn flourish. The only thing recognizable from those early efforts is Condon’s baritone croon as the band moves closer and closer to bland piano rock.

The album opens with second single and longest song “Gibraltar,” which features a congo and snare shuffle with a simple rising piano chord melody. Condon’s singing is the same as always—fragile with indiscriminate pronunciation leading to everything but the first line sounding like gibberish. It sounds like something off of “The Rip Tide,” a largely successful mix of world music and synth/piano pop, and for that, it is probably the best song of the album.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the album only devolves further and further from this unique sound. The title track, “No No No,” starts with a kitschy synth melody before it falls into a generically upbeat piano ballad about nothing, with the same verse repeated twice and a la-la chorus. Trumpets arpeggiate and accent the end of the song in an attempt to channel “The Flying Cup Club”’s “Nantes,” but only fail to disguise the fizzling out of a song already lacking in substance.

The song “No No No” is hardly Condon’s only attempt to channel the past. “At Once” brings in a middle school brass band’s worth of sloppy entrances, and the pointless “As Needed” repeats a string section lifted straight out of “The Rip Tide.” “Perth” features a matured version of “No No No”’s synths over Condon’s heartache-worn crooning, but the horns sound like they have been lifted out of a “Sesame Street” transition.

Throughout the entire album, what was once unique just sounds lazy and uninspired as the band that used to rely so much on a novel approach to pop moves further and further from its past strengths. The album's closer “So Allowed” brings in what sounds like an accordion, one of the core instruments of Beirut’s earlier works, but it is quickly drowned out by an orchestra repeating the same chord progression over a piano repeating, you guessed it, the same chord progression. The song cuts off, blessedly before Condon can attempt to assemble a facade of resolution.

Although fans may be disappointed at the album’s brevity, its contents could easily be summed up in an EP. The album largely doesn’t engage the listener with anything unique the same way Condon’s earlier albums did, save for “Gibraltar” and a trumpet accent here or there, and it makes you question the value of those four years Beirut spent taking time off.

Maybe they should have stayed that way: off.