BEIRUT: Back in the 20th century there was an adage that every musician – any musician in a country that cultivated homegrown Western-style pop music anyway – aspired to be the next Lennon-McCartney.

Denizens of 21st-century pop culture may need to be reminded that “Lennon-McCartney” was half of The Beatles, the half that wrote most of the iconic U.K. rock’n’roll band’s vastly successful repertoire.

A casual listener may find the duo’s songs indistinguishable in the band’s early years but their successful song-writing collaboration stemmed from their differences. By the time Lennon and McCartney went their separate ways in the early ’70s, though, their musical differences betrayed their diverging personal preoccupations.

It’s tempting to glance down memory lane when trying to sum up Zeid and the Wings, which is about to release “Aasfeh” (Storm), its first full LP. It’s tempting, but probably not very useful.

Ranging from about a minute to just shy of six minutes in length, the 10 tunes on Aasfeh might have been designed for radio, and there’s nothing in their content to keep them off the radio.

That said, these multiple-layered, restless combinations of electronically generated assonance, augmented by easy-listening upper-register English and Arabic vocals – whether those of Hamdan himself or his accompanists – sound as though they were crafted with the iPod listener in mind.

It’s not easy to pigeonhole the music on Aasfeh. The band’s press materials try to be helpful by pointing out that there are trace elements of Arabic folk, reggae, rock’n’roll and electro in its repertoire.

All of these are evident, but equally constant is the dissonance between the album’s happy, upbeat arrangements and lyrics that often radiate a restless alienation from the political realities in the country that inspired them.

Aasfeh begins with the crashing of waves on the shore before moving briskly into the upbeat pop tune “Ocean.” One of several English-language songs on the record, it provides a fair prototype for what’s to follow.

After an informal seconds-long introduction of found sound, the tune is driven forward at a jaunty pace by bass line and electronically colored percussion. Insofar as they’re “about” anything, Hamdan’s harmonized vocals are an ode to what oceans are for – getting away.

Sung in Arabic, “Aasfeh” begins in an equally upbeat electronics-driven fashion before changing gear to mutate into a loose-limbed, vocals-centered tune. It its third “movement,” the tune reverts back to fast-paced fantasia mode of the opening bars.

The reggae-inflected “Cowards” commences with vocal samples that sound as though they might hale from African voices. When Hamdan’s vocals commence, they live up to the title’s promise of a trace of social criticism.

“Free me, free me, free me from the world,” Hamdan sings.

“Give me a chance to make something out of my life.”

“Hkini” (Talk to me) commences with a tune redolent of North African percussion and wind instruments. After a moment, Codsi and Hamdan’s machines synthesize the tune and, the restless tune alternatively flirts with the original field recording and shifts gears to become something more jaunty.

There’s quite a bit in the candy-coated harmonies of Aasfeh that recalls the music of Lennon-McCartney, and their tens of millions of emulators. The eye may condition the ear to hear such connections – “Zeid and the Wings” being a transparent reference to Paul McCartney’s collaboration with Denny Laine and his most successful post-Beatles vehicle, Wings.

Though it’s a seven-person band, the two principal talents behind Zeid and the Wings are Zeid Hamdan and Marc Codsi – who, depending on your vintage, could be his Lennon or his Laine.

Hamdan is invariably introduced as one-half of Soap Kills, Lebanon’s seminal trip-hop act formed in 1998 with vocalist-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan.

After that ended, the male Hamdan threw his energy into another collaboration, this time with Jeremie and Timothee Regnier to form the Brit-pop band The New Government, a harmony-driven outfit that was entirely unlike Soap Kills yet successful in its own terms. The band met an untimely end during the 2006 conflict, when the Regniers had to leave the country.

A fixture in the indy and experimental music scene, Codsi is known for his contribution to the Beirut thrash metal/free improv artists Scrambled Eggs. Later he and vocalist Mayaline Hage formed the successfully hard-edged, yet stylish, Lumi.

Hamdan and Codsi are complemented by Yasmeen Ayyashi, Sarah Barrage and Gihane al-Hage on vocals and keyboardist Rita Okais.“Castles of Sand,” another happy-sounding reggae-ish tune, reiterates some of the sentiments in “Cowards.”

“You can burn all your tires / set your houses on fire / just leave me on the side / let me float into space / and build my castles of sand / ’cause I don’t give a damn … ”

It’s an anthem for political disillusionment a la Liban, and in English.

Zeid and the Wings’ “Aasfeh” should be available by various material and immaterial means after Sunday’s album launch. See beirutunderground.com for more details.