You know you’re not in for the regulation indie guitar ride when you clap ears on what sounds like a Balkan funeral lament, apparently featuring bells, zithers, horns, stomps, arcane percussion instruments, ukuleles and accordions. Ivo Papasov conducts a N’Awlins marching jazz band with Natasha Atlas and Harry Lime nipping along for a margarita anyone? Hey, come back! What did I say to put you off?
Actually, though, there’s no need to run off, because BEIRUT’S bizarre ‘The Gulag Orkestar’ is, in reality, quite fascinating stuff and – despite the potent Eastern European feel of the music – actually the work of a New Mexican wunderkind called Zach Condon with assistance from our omnipresent friend, Pro-Tools. I sure as hell hadn’t expected that to be the case until I read the sleeve notes in detail.
Condon, mind you, is a sonic bedroom creator with a difference. The album’s Eastern European is actually the result of an impressionable young Zach’s spell living in Paris where his immediate neighbours were Serbian artists. Hooked by the sounds blasting from their flat, Zach ventured in to say hello and ended up borrowing and gorging himself silly on a whole collection of remarkable folk-flavoured records which have since worked their way out of his psyche via this remarkably eccentric album.
Crucially, though, while ‘The Gulag Orkestar’ may be eccentric and esoteric, it IS consistent and not simply irritating dilettante dabbling. Tracks like ‘Prenzlauerberg’ and ‘Brandenburg’ are full-blooded Eastern European waltzes with rich, carnival overtones, tangibly brilliant Romany horn refrains and Zach’s main collaborators Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel) and Heather Trost (A Hawk & A Hacksaw) adding suitably potent percussion and string parts.
Elsewhere, Condon stakes his claim as the post-rock Tiny Tim with some furiously plucked ukulele on tracks such as ‘The Canals of Our City’ and ‘Postcards From Italy’, while this latter and ‘Mount Wrocial (Idle Days)’ also showcase his sorrow-wracked croon to great effect. Later on, the gentle, rippling folk of ‘The Bunker’ and the intimate ‘Scenic World’ – with its’ simple rhythm box, playful keyboard refrain and vocal almost worthy of the description “David Byrne-esque” ensure Condon keeps us guessing as he takes the chequered flag and sets up the weirdest lap of honour imaginable with the curious backwards masking of ‘After The Curtain’.
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I’d imagined Condon might have had his fill of Eastern European folk after this concerted effort, but the attendant ‘Lon Gisland EP’ (sic) suggests his creative sponge is far from squeezed dry in this area. Admittedly he adds strident piano to the already heady brew on ‘My Family’s Role In The World Revolution’ and re-invents ‘Scenic World’ with accordions in fine style, but surely he reserves one of his best for the closing ‘Carousels’ which begins as an ‘overture’ version of ‘Gulag Orkester’ before breaking into something special and propulsive of its’ own accord and really DOES evoke the breathless fun of the fair into the bargain.
OK, so Beirut’s curiously skewed worldview probably won’t appeal to the mainstream, and some of ‘The Gulag Orkestar’ is indeed an acquired taste. Nevertheless, it’s beautifully researched, executed with love and skill and suggests Zach Condon is another of those talented prodigies like Beck and Conor Oberst who we’ll ended up clasping to our bosoms over time. And – like it or not – you can’t keep that sort of talent down in the long run.
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