Categories
FEATURES

Beirut: Traveling With Gypsy King Zach Condon

beirut2

No wonder Beirut’s Zach Condon had doubts about Gulag Orkestar (Ba Da Bing!). A teenager making an album in his Albuquerque, N.M., bedroom wouldn’t necessarily expect success. But Gulag Orkestar turned out to be one of 2006’s left-field surprises, a stirring, crooning, half-drunken celebration. Condon had made home recordings throughout his teens; he had dropped out of school (four times) and migrated to Europe (twice). In Paris, he fell in with a group of college-age kids playing Balkan brass-band music.

“They would roam around Paris with these brass instruments at night,” says Condon. “Instead of going out to clubs, they would pull out these tubas and trumpets and head out into the streets of Paris to play. When I came back, I was like, ‘I can’t help but do that kind of music.’ The greatest thing about it was just watching these kids. They were messing up and were too drunk to do it, and they would tire out. Everything was so amateur.”

The Kocani Orkestar, a professional Macedonian brass band that’s been active since 1995, was another influential source, and Condon enlisted Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk And A Hacksaw) to add percussion and accordion to a handful of Gulag tracks. In December 2005, Condon moved to Brooklyn to put the finishing touches on the record, which came out in May.

“January was a bizarre month when I was sitting around the house wondering if it was going to take off, if nobody was going to like it, if it sounded amateur, if it sounded professional—just doubts everywhere,” says Condon. “When it was done and I was looking at it and listening to it, I was thinking, ‘This sounds like one big giant mistake.’ I’d just moved to a new city, I’d just turned 19. There was a lot up in the air; I’d just dropped out of school again.”

Condon’s worries soon abated when, before the album’s release, mp3s of irresistible tracks such as “Postcards From Italy” were passed around and praised on the Internet. “Postcards From Italy” matches what Condon calls his “garbled, drunken, half-understood vocals” with a Stephin Merritt-like ukulele riff, Barnes’ marching-band drums and a triumphant trumpet. Condon hastily assembled a band of friends to tour—up to 10 people playing 19 or so instruments—although he plans to continue as a mostly solo recording entity. (His latest release is the four-song Lon Gisland EP.)

“I’ve been obsessed with French pop and chanson music,” says Condon of Beirut’s next move. “[The Balkan influence] is always going to be there. But I do not plan to write the same album twice.”

—Steve Klinge