The Flying Club Cup
Young Zach Condon, the talented multi-instrumentalist behind world-folk troubadours Beirut, possesses a talent for the theatrical second only to Tom Waits. Yet where Waits has traded in nightmarish distortions of junkyard blues, sea-shanties and broken down honky-tonk, Condon has a passion for the rusted out musical textures of the Old World. Though Condon’s shambolic brass ensembles and swelling ballads may bear little actual resemblance to the music of the gypsies and café idlers he so vividly evokes, his music is possessed of a dreamlike romanticism that manages to redeem even his most florid compositions. Where Condon’s well-received debut *,Gulag Orkestar* sought to recapture the drunken chaos of a gypsy orchestra, for *Flying Cup Club* he has turned his eyes westward, assembling a set of songs that sound as though they might provide a dream soundtrack to a tale of 19th century Parisian debauchery. Condon’s soaring baritone may not be to all tastes, and he often breaks into a melodramatic tremolo that puts a strain on his already overwrought melodies. Nonetheless, Condon has a fine ear for musical textures, and *Flying Cup Club* has many rewards in store for those willing to indulge Condon’s musical fantasies.
Zach Condon's horn and ukelele remain in Brooklyn for the bulk of his sophomore album, The Flying Club Cup. Instead, he returns to France-- the place where he was first exposed to the Balkan music that colored much of this debut, Gulag Orkestar.
Zach Condon's makeshift world-folk outfit Beirut surveyed the exotic oompah and frostbitten bar-balladry of Eastern Europe on last year's Gulag Orkestar, a charming exercise that never quite transcended its "exercise-ness." Condon dragged Beirut into French cabarets for the follow-up, The Flying Club Cup, an album…
It was the other internet sensation of 2006 (move over Midlake). Beirut, aka 21-year-old Zach Condon, found themselves roundly hyped from all corners of the online music press. The debut record, The Gulag Orkestar, was a wondrous marvel of music. Steeped…
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.