Deep inside the heart of every artistic soul is a bead-wearing, goat-toting gypsy minstrel, shouting profanities in foreign tongues to anyone within earshot. In Beirut’s new album, The Flying Club Cup, frontman and lead songwriter Zach Condon releases that gypsy (minus the profanities), and boy can that gypsy wail.
If it isn’t obvious already, Beirut is a bit of a cultural anomaly. Condon, a 21-year old Santa Fe, NM native, plays Eastern European-sounding music and really dresses like a gypsy, complete with an ill-fitting, cream-colored three-piece suit and awkward porn-star mustache.
But what Condon lacks aesthetically he makes up for in talent and originality. Beirut’s latest release hasn’t departed much from the Eastern European roots that colored their first album, Gulag Orkestar. Most of the songs reek of goulash but, unlike the first album, Beirut doesn’t force feed these foreign tracks to the listener. Instead the influences hold different roles in each song, with the melodic part of a song often sounding more contemporary and the percussion more archaic.
Condon’s youthful vigor has given way to an increased maturity, as is evident on every song in The Flying Club Cup. The work as a whole is less homogeneous than his previous work, opting instead to create a musical melting-pot where different traditional folk sounds are pieced together to form Frankenstein-esque fusions. Some songs work better than others.
“Cherbourg” and “The Flying Club Cup” sound like circus-like throwaways from the previous album, but the failures represent a minority of the total album. Other more successful songs include “Cliquot,” which is reminiscent of Paris at the turn of the century, and “Forks and Knives (La Fête),” which sounds like it was borrowed from a traditional Chinese opera.
The crown jewels of the album are “Guyamas Sonora”and “The Penalty.” The former is divine, with the interplay of vocal harmonies, xylophones and horns mixing together to draw up images of a bearded, unwashed choir of angels. “The Penalty” starts in the way that Beirut’s best work up till now always has, with Condon singing solo above the sound of a ukulele.
Condon’s untethered voice is—at its best moments like in “The Penalty”—capable of turning every syllable uttered into poetry. Near the end of the song, the rest of the band enters to great effect, showing that what truly sets this album apart from the last is that this is a much more collaborative effort.
At the end of the day, The Flying Club Cup is a unique album that, despite the usual highs and lows, achieves more than merely paying tribute to the folk music of a distant land and people. The music elevates its sources in indie rock and folk music, creating an amalgamation that exists neither in folk music’s past nor indie rock’s future.
It represents a true, timeless artistic endeavor—it is like many other pieces of work that are birthed in the distant past but will never be without soul and meaning in the present.
