Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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One of 2006's most unexpected indie success stories, Beirut combines a wide variety of styles, from pre-rock/pop music and Eastern European Gypsy styles to the alternately plaintive and whimsical indie folk of the Decemberists to the lo-fi, homemade psychedelic experimentation of Neutral Milk Hotel. At the heart of this sonic hybrid was a teenager from Albuquerque, New Mexico, a fact that made Beirut's debut album, Gulag Orkestar, all the more surprising. Something of a musical prodigy, multi-instrumentalist Zach Condon began making one-man D.I.Y. bedroom recordings in his early teens; while conducting interviews several years later, he claimed to have recorded an entire album of '50s-style doo wop material and a collection of electronic pop songs inspired by the Magnetic Fields. (Indeed, Condon's dolorous vocal delivery and low, somewhat shaky pitch sound directly inspired by the Fields' Stephin Merritt.)

After dropping out of high school, Condon claims to have traveled through Europe at the age of 16, in the process becoming exposed to the Balkan folk and Gypsy music that's at the heart of Gulag Orkestar. Back home in Albuquerque, Condon crossed paths with fellow New Mexican Jeremy Barnes, formerly of Neutral Milk Hotel, whose own albums as A Hawk and a Hacksaw share similarly ethnographic interests with Condon's new material. With the help of Barnes and his A Hawk and a Hacksaw partner, Heather Trost, Condon recorded the songs that would make up Gulag Orkestar largely on his own, playing accordion, keyboards, saxophone, clarinet, mandolin, ukulele, horns, glockenspiel, and percussion along with Barnes' drums and Trost's cello and violin.

After Barnes gave an early version of the album to Ba Da Bing! Records label head Ben Goldberg, the newly christened band Beirut was signed to the New Jersey-based label and Condon moved from Albuquerque to Brooklyn, where he put together a floating collective of part-time bandmembers along the lines of Broken Social Scene for live performances. Following the release of Gulag Orkestar in May 2006, critical approbation quickly moved from the smallest blogs to mainstream media outlets that pegged Condon as a one-man cross between Jeff Mangum, Conor Oberst, and Sufjan Stevens. The EP Lon Gisland followed in 2007, leading up to the full-length The Flying Club Cup later that year. In 2009, Condon released the double-EP March of the Zapotec/Holland. The latter featured six electronic tracks recorded at home under the pseudonym Realpeople, while the former included six tracks recorded in Oaxaca, Mexico with the Jimenez Band, a 19-piece group from Teotitlán del Valle. 2011’s Rip Tide was recorded in Upstate New York during a cold winter, yet it still managed to retain the sunny, uplifting sound that is synonymous with the outfit. The first single, “East Harlem,” featured lush melodies that resonated with Condon's guised lyrics as well as an array of ukuleles, horns, and keys. Preceded by the infectious title cut, 2015's No No No arrived after a period of personal upheaval that saw Condon dealing with health issues and a divorce.

Biography by Stewart Mason, Allmusic.com

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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The best album to come out of Albuquerque since the Shins decamped for the Pacific Northwest, the debut album by Beirut (aka New Mexico-born 19-year-old singer/songwriter Zach Condon) bears an immediate resemblance both to Denver's DeVotchKa and the current passions of the Athens, GA, crowd formerly associated with the Elephant 6 stable. Like DeVotchKa, Condon is heavily influenced by Eastern European folk music and, to a lesser extent, the mariachi trumpets and Latin rhythms of the desert Southwest: the songs on Gulag Orkestar are lousy with mandolins and similarly plinky members of the string instrument family, accordions, horns, and hand percussion clearly played with dramatic in-studio arm flourishes. But like the Athens folks (some of whom appear here in a supporting role, most notably A Hawk and a Hacksaw's Jeremy Barnes), Condon isn't interested in mere approximations of traditional forms. Condon and friends use the folk instruments primarily as really cool-sounding textures, exotic backdrops for Condon's melodic indie folk tunes and impressionistic lyrics. The lyrics, it must be said, are the album's most obvious flaw, clearly the work of a young, romantically inclined teen who has never been to Europe but has seen a lot of foreign art films about, like, Gypsies 'n' stuff. Ignore the clunky lyrics – easy enough to do since Condon is an unexpectedly appealing singer with a rich, mellifluous voice that, no kidding, recalls the great bel canto crooners of the pre-rock era (along with a little Nick Cave) – and Gulag Orkestar is an infinitely more appealing album.

Review by Stewart Mason, Allmusic.com

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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Beirut's five-song EP LON GISLAND works as a nice stop-gap for those anxious for the next full-length from wunderkind songwriter Zach Condon. Condon's penchant for unique instrumentation and world-music accents (particularly klezmer and Balkan brass) is in full flourish on this brief 2007 release, as best revealed on the rousing instrumental "My Family's Role in the World Revolution" and the gorgeous reworking of GULAG ORKESTAR's "Scenic World"–which gets fleshed out with the requisite accordions, ukuleles, and mournful brass, recasting the song as a bittersweet death march. Condon, indisputably, has talent and vision; that he can pack as much of it into five songs as he does here is staggering.

Review by Allmusic.com

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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Credit Zach Condon for not acting his age. While many 21-year-olds are working on finishing up their undergraduate years, Condon is making albums. And not just any messily-recorded-in-the-garage (or GarageBand) albums, but fully developed and composed and realized albums. His first full-length, under the name Beirut, Gulag Orkestar, with its Eastern European-inspired horns and strings, a kind of Neutral Milk Hotel-meets-gypsy field recordings, was adored in the indie rock world, and its successor, The Flying Club Cup, is an even more mature accomplishment. Though not as immediately catchy as his debut, 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.

Review by Marisa Brown, Allmusic.com

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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Continuing his quest to eke out the oompah from every corner of the globe, the first half of this double EP sees Zach Condon looking to the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Assisted by a 19-piece funeral band, his trademark woozy laments (“No man ever could steal her heart…” – ‘La Llorona’) and waltzing rhythms are present, but buried beneath layers of tumbling horns they seem much richer, with the charming languor of his voice twisting the mariachi saunter into something dark. Strangely, it’s the synth-pop gems of second EP ‘Holland’ that seem the most foreign. The breezy sway of ‘Venice’ and the lovelorn chime of ‘The Concubine’ could be mistaken for lost Magnetic Fields demos.

Review by Tessa Harris, NME

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Beirut - Studio Albums & EPs Collection 2005-2011 (6CD)

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Zach Condon's third outing under the Beirut moniker shakes the compass and tosses it into the dirt, kicking up a typically eclectic cloud of orchestral indie pop that allows all of his influences (Balkan, French chanson, alternative rock, and European and Mexican folk) a chance to throw down. Opening with the familiar sound of a four-chord round stacked with accordion, brass, and ukulele, “A Candle’s on Fire,” which features harmonies from fellow Brooklyn-ite Sharon Van Etten, sets the tone for what may end up being Condon's most personal and least fussy set of tunes to date, despite the habitual, ornate instrumentation. Condon spends much of Rip Tide writing in first person, and it lends an air of much needed intimacy to the always gorgeous, yet historically elusive Beirut sound. Bolstered by a pair of instantly likeable singles in “East Harlem” and the spirited and animated, road trip-ready “Santa Fe,” the latter of which pays homage to the singer’s southwestern hometown, and peppered with sparse, warm ballads and a title track that swaps the usual, Condon-esque image of a cobblestone-lined, Eastern European village for a post-siesta cocktail at a beachfront Mediterranean cafe, Rip Tide, like the band’s previous two releases, feels like a postcard from another era, only this time around, it’s signed and dated.

Review by James Christopher Monger, Allmusic.com