Beirut - august holland, 2015

"No No No is a world away from its predecessor. That album shared some common ground with the rest of the Beirut catalogue in that at its heart was genuine, ramshackle charm; this new record, though, is an exercise in elegance and poise. Given the bleak personal circumstances that frame its gestation, it is remarkably mellow - chirpy, almost, on the likes of ‘Perth’, a song named after the town in which Condon reached his nadir in 2013, and ‘Gibraltar’. The tracks sound low-key, but in fact, they’re cleverly taut compositions - the album runs just short of 30 minutes, and not a second goes to waste."