Dublin Opinion

With the end of Hallowe’en, when the smoke and cordite from the fires and fireworks makes Dublin look like Beirut, we move on to the next festival - November 2 - Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). If you can’t be in Mexico for this celebration of all people dead, then what better alternative than Calexico’s Tex-Mex blend of rock and mariachi in the Old Lady of Dame Street? As an added treat, there was a late contender for the ’support-slot-of-the-year’ award.

So there we were one more time in Dublin’s fair city, facing down a multi-talented, multi-instrumental brass-heavy, collective of bright young things rollicking through a set of uplifting, inspiring tunes. They’ve even got a requisite female violinist or two. Oddly though, these troubadours on the stage are not Canadian; they are in fact, your new favourite band since last week - Beirut.

I don’t know the first thing about this band, why they are called after that beleaguered city, nor why their album is called Gulag Orkestar. On a good day they sound like one of those French brass bands you might hear practicing under a Seine bridge, fronted by a random passerby improvising vocals in a makey-uppy language. A clarion-calling Sigur Rós for the trumpet generation. On a bad day, they might sound like Borat’s Kazakh house-band.

If you were too late to get one of those ‘I heard Arcade Fire before you‘ tee-shirts in time for Electric Picnic, too slow on the uptake to see Broken Social Scene more than once this year, and, like me, too dozy to get tickets for next week’s gig-of-the-week, TV On The Radio, then Beirut may just be the band for you. Heavens, the album isn’t even in the shops yet on this side of the Atlantic. Happy-up yourself on a Friday afternoon with some guilt-free MP3s from the band’s website or listen to it on myspace.