Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Beirut at Bogart's

Beirut and bright lights


The perks of living in a somewhat large city like Cincinnati just keep piling on. This past week, it was in the form of one of my favorite artists coming to town to perform. On 11/11/11, Beirut came to Bogart's a local establishment near the University of Cincinnati.

Beirut is one of those rare bands that manages to maintain the polish of their recorded material when performing live, something I had realized when I saw them at Bonnaroo back in June, and was reaffirmed of in Friday. The band started off the set with songs from the first album, Gulag Orkestar, and the early EPs, before launching into tracks from The Flying Cup Club and The Rip Tide, one of my early contenders for this year's best album list.

While I could have lived without their opener, a band called Ramesh, Beirut's was an amazing set and an interesting view of how excited people can get for the most unexpected forms and aspects of music. Heck, when I was in high school, the band kids were dorks, now one's on stage blaring an beautiful trumpet solo and the crowd goes wild!

I've seen them twice now and do expect that to be the last!

Mini setlist:

"Elephant Gun"

"East Harlem"

"My Night with the Prostitute from Marseilles"

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