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![March Of The Zapotec/Holland [EP] Image](https://static.metacritic.com/images/products/music/5/4493c02f359db76348695882d6a9e506-98.jpg)
- Summary: The first of the double EP set, March of the Zapotec, features Mexican music influences, whereas the second, Holland, includes songs made by Zach Condon under the name Realpeople.
- Record Label: Ba Da Bing
- Genre(s): Indie, Rock
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 23
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Mixed: 7 out of 23
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Negative: 1 out of 23
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These are two distinctively different sounding EPs but they are successfully united by Condon’s never-failing trademarks: wonderful vocal lines, linear melodic patterns and that soothing voice.
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Zapotec has a regal, brassy sort of sweep--check the martial melody 'The Akara'--and the best songs on Holland twist and turn over a warm, buttery backbeat.
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To reiterate, then: it’s not the third Beirut album, like, proper. But as a means of sating collective appetites before that record does arrive--heightening expectations, even--it is a remarkable achievement.
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A game of two halves as Brooklyn world music troop go synth pop on split disc.
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The resulting EP is powerful, but also a bit slight.
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They make the point that Condon has the talent to move in any direction that he pleases, but the reliance on smart ideas means that they only occasionally create a similar emotional impact to the work that got us so excited about Beirut in the first place.
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There seems to be something unsettlingly artifical about the whole Beirut project, as if idea man Zach Condon is playing some strange cultural appropriation game for which he’s the only one privy to the rules.
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1 out of 1
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Mixed: 0 out of 1
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Negative: 0 out of 1
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Nov 3, 2010
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