About

A TAV Curator's Pick.

Since its release in May of 2006, Beirut’s internationally celebrated Gulag Orkestar album has soundscanned more than 45,000 copies, and the band has done a tsunami of interviews, photoshoots and features (including NY Times, Spin, Pitchfork, Urb, and Village Voice). This great fervor developed around an album conceived and constructed in a teenager’s New Mexico bedroom. 

Six months of recording has led to The Flying Club Cup, an homage to France’s culture, fashion, history, and music. Two years ago, Zach Condon immersed himself in Balkan folk, absorbed sounds, scales, styles, and the sonic joys of a skeletally structured, cacophonic ensemble—and moved west. Soaking up the likes of François Hardy, Charles Aznavour, and, most notably, Jacques Brel (a huge influence on both Scott Walker and Mark E. Smith), Condon has been articulating his conversational French.   

Most of the album was created at a nondescript Albuquerque office space, a.k.a. A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s practice room; Heather Trost plays violin and viola on three songs. Engineering and production assistance came from Griffin Rodriguez (A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Man Man). He helped separate the many instrumentalists involved in recording, as opposed to Gulag’s largely solo flight. The orkestar, which has solidified into a core group of eight members, has grand plans for replicating the album live, and is now an integral part of Beirut’s identity. Additional recording was done with Owen Pallet (Final Fantasy) at the Masonic church studio owned by The Arcade Fire. 

Within the spectacle and intimacy of The Flying Club Cup, you can hear a love letter to the joie de vivre that defines our existence. Listen closer, and you also hear the emergence of a singular musical talent—Mr. Zachary F. Condon, at present living in Paris—unbounded by cultural borders and by where his heart travels. A September-October tour of nice theaters in large U.S. cities is in the planning stages, as are more dates in 2008. - Ba Da Bing Records

“The Flying Club Cup contains a sense of intrigue that pulls the listener in beguilingly, twisting and swaying and marching its way through the romanticized ideas of the Balkan town, the rustic Southern French village, the small Italian trattoria. It's elaborate New World indie pop that tries to touch the Old as best it can. Flügelhorns and accordions and mandolins line the 13 songs here like old bricks, Condon's voice rising elegiacally over in layered swells, tired and wise, inspired by, but not limited to, the rich French musical past, from Tino Rossi to Jacques Brel. Because Beirut plays music that feels like it's been reflected off a long and storied life, there's the possibility for unearned pretension to appear, but there's a real sincerity, and a sense of life, that finds its way into the songs here.

Condon and his collaborators (which include Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett, who even sings on the lovely "Cliquot") have not forgotten the kind of jocularity and community inherent in the folk traditions they pull from, so even as violins, organs, and harpsichords play dramatic and acute melodies and the vocals ascend to a feverish intensity, that feeling of being in the back of some tavern, passing around dishes and glasses and singing aloud with your compatriots, is present, and keeps things grounded, more real. "In the Mausoleum" balances syncopated piano with minor melodies and an ominous upright bass, while both "Guyamas Sonora" and the title track use dramatic horns to convey a kind of triumph in the prosperity of the tradition. It's thoughtful and fun and sophisticated, utterly alluring, another fantastic success by Zach Condon.” – AllMusic

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