By Stephen CarlickEven as Zach Condon was releasing his 2009 double EP March of the Zapotec/Holland, the founder, singer and songwriter for Beirut already knew what his new record, The Rip Tide, was going to sound like. "I knew the moment I finished those EPs that this was what I was going to do next. To take the thread that united all the melodies and harmonies and everything I've done and just focus on that ― and that alone. Not really care, stylistically, how it came out."
Beirut's musical journey in the last half-decade has encompassed Balkan folk, the work of Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel and the mariachi influences found on the Zapotec EP. Embracing simplicity ― actually, not even simplicity, but just letting inspiration be his guide ― is a significant step forward for Condon, who's been on a series of very specific musical journeys since he was in high school.
"The first record was released when I was 19," he continues, "and you can tell I'm trying on musical personalities and taking influences from really different places ― which I'm very happy about, I'm totally excited by that still ― but it was like a form of musical adolescence, in a sense."
Such a self-assured statement would never have come from Condon in 2006, when the teenager was launched into the spotlight on the back of his excellent debut, The Gulag Orkestar. The album effortlessly fused Eastern European, Balkan-style horns and folk with shambolic indie rock influences like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Decemberists. That he was a natty dresser, sang in a haunted baritone tremor and wailed on a trumpet instead of a guitar only added to his Old World charm. Condon, who was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and only began home recording because he suffered from insomnia, was instantly embraced for the breadth of his musical vision.
"At the time, I thought I was invincible, and that no matter what changed in my life, I would just coast through it like it was no big deal." In 2008, Beirut released Gulag's follow-up, The Flying Club Cup. The tribute to European sophistication, particularly Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel, was frillier, perhaps even more ambitious than his debut, and Condon took it as a given that his next steps would be as effortless as the first few. He took his six-piece band collective on the road throughout North America before taking The Flying Club Cup back to the roots of its inspiration.
"When we got to Europe, two days in I started getting these really intense panic attacks, constantly. I didn't even believe panic attacks were a real thing until it happened to me." The entire European tour had to be cancelled. "My reaction to [my initial success]," Condon realizes now, "was ignorance."
From an early age, if Zach Condon was told what to do, he would do the opposite. "My dad had given me a guitar, but I dropped that," he says of his early musical experiences. "My grandfather played saxophone, and so my dad sent me to school the first day, to sign up for band, with a saxophone. They asked what was in the case; I said 'trumpet.'" Condon may have a refined, boy-next-door image but his introspective side has been pitted against an inner rebel for much of his career. He even rebels against what he loves: "There's something more expressive about the trumpet compared to the guitar," he enthuses. "I took a couple of years of trumpet lessons as a young kid and that's about it. When I got into music theory, I just stopped listening."
After cancelling the Flying Club Cup tour, Condon retreated to a childhood love of mariachi bands and headed to Oaxaca, Mexico. He began work on March of the Zapotec, once again channelling the music of a specific time and place far from his own experience. But feeling like the EP was a little sparse, he returned to a handful of bedroom recordings he'd done as a teenager under the name Realpeople. More electronic-based, influenced by early Magnetic Fields records, the Realpeople songs showcased a different side of Condon. "That's where I started," he explains. "That's what I used to do as a teenager: write little synth-pop ditties."
Risking alienating fans of his more organic sound, he compiled the Realpeople songs as the Holland half of what became a double EP release. "It was super liberating. I'd done this Mexican project, so to speak, which I'd been dying to do for a long time. I just love hearing my voice over varying palettes of sound. I just thought 'Shit, if I'm going to put this out, I would love for people to have more material to listen to, so why not show them where I came from?' That was the point behind it."
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Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2011-08-29 22:49:43I am so excited for the new album! I love every bit of Beirut (Though, not RealPeople)
