Gallipoli

There is a richness and an oddity to Condon's output that deserves continued attention. [Mar 2019, p.112]

Gallipoli is almost always an intriguing listen. Soaking the sound they’ve spent over a decade cultivating in dazzling Italian sun, Beirut’s latest is a welcome summer holiday.

Condon’s built an entire world with globetrotting horn charts at or near the heart, and Gallipoli revisits it with some of his most emotive songwriting and singing.

With Condon's warm quaver and bevy of brass instruments, acoustic and electric guitars, electronic and acoustic drums, accordion, and mix of pianos, organs, and synthesizers including modular synths gathered under a production ethos that dials up already colorful arrangements to Technicolor spectacle.

Gallipoli is the most acoustically rich Beirut album to date, with studio buzz and random dissonance deployed as musical texture more than ever before. [Mar 2019, p.35]

Even though Beirut did not reinvent their modus operandi with Gallipoli, the record stands as one of their stronger moments, mainly due to Condon's perspective towards the feeling of this record.

Gallipoli is swooningly gorgeous and rich with offerings we've come to love about Condon: His weakness for exotic cities as song titles, a romance with cultures of antiquity, the combination of organ and brass fanfare, an exceptional sense for melody, and an ever-full heart. Three well-placed instrumentals punctuate and act as palate cleansers. Nowhere is this sugary, overly ornate, or maudlin: An excellent return to form.

Gallipoli--a complete departure from band’s musically stale, emotionally sleepy No No No--reminds long-time listeners of the initial hype that surrounded Condon and Beirut long ago.

It’s not a particularly groundbreaking Beirut album, but it is certainly a beautiful Beirut album.

Condon’s constant obsession with anachronism occasionally yields lovely, even compelling results. Other times, listening to his music feels like talking to friends from high school you’ve lost touch with. There’s good stuff here, but ultimately, it’s hard to be excited about something that feels so seriously entrenched in the past.

There’s a gorgeous familiarity to the record, but it’s also one peppered with adventure.

At times his croon resembles Jens Lekman’s, and it makes you wish he paired, as Lekman does, his romance with wit and self-effacement. ... All that said, there are plenty of plainly beautiful moments on Gallipoli.

Throwaways make the ten-song album feel low on substantial ideas: there's enough material here for a solid EP, but it's rather thin for a full-length. Still, as a modestly enjoyable throwback to 2006, it gets the job done.

Gallipoli, recorded in Berlin and Puglia, is oddly unmoving, lacking range for all its seductive picturesque roaming. [Mar 2019, p.96]

The end result is an incredibly inoffensive album, one that’s perfectly lovely without offering any striking new ideas or features that make it memorable.