a r t i s t : Beirut
t i t l e : Gulag Orkestar
d a t e : 2006
l a b e l : 4AD
g e n r e : Indie
r l s. d a t e : Nov/2006
t r a c k s : 16
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 75,3 MB
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This here is the 2CD reissue on 4AD which includes the "Lon
Gilsand EP". Enjoy!
Pitchfork said this about original release:
My grandparents were Russian immigrants who spent their lives
working in factories; when they got too old for that, they
graduated to the cafeteria of a Queens high school. Visiting
them as a kid, the thick accents of their incomprehensible
language were, to me, the music of the so-called "motherland."
When grandpa was spinning records, though, he opted for
melancholic horns and voices or polka. He may have dug Gulag
Orkestar, the debut album by Zach Condon aka Beirut.
Beirut's received quite a bit of pre-release buzz. He deserves
some of it. His tuneful Balkan stomp is fairly unique within
the indie realm, an aesthetic shared with Man Man, Gogol
Bordello, and Barbez but few others. That, and for a
19-year-old from Albuquerque (now living in Brooklyn), he
sounds like an old man sipping vodka and humming along to
Tchaikovsky while the neighborhood kids play stick ball or
drink egg creams. The sound is there, but beneath the
atmospherics his themes of war, fallen curtains, bunkers, life
on the Rhine-- his song titles are more fixated on Germany
(and Slovakia and an imaginary Eastern Bloc) than Russia-- and
Gulags, are vague and sometimes less than effective. That
makes sense: He doesn't have the lived experience for those
situations. Perhaps he studied W.G. Sebald to add some color,
and in a very Sebaldian move the album's anonymous cover
photos were found in a library in Leipzig, Germany. In the
liner notes, Condon asks if anyone knows the photographer's
whereabouts.
Beirut's brassy In the Aeroplane Over the Sea-like
instrumental accents have garnered Neutral Milk Hotel
comparisons. There's also guilt by association-- ex-NMH player
Jeremy Barnes and his A Hawk and a Hacksaw compatriot Heather
Toast contribute accordion, violins, and percussion. But while
Condon writes generally spare, pretty tableau that can lodge
themselves in your ear like hazy memories, his words aren't as
intellectually, emotionally, or erotically invested as
Mangum's feverish, tear-jerky lyrics. And that's OK-- it's
unfair to hold a debut record up to one of the bona fide indie
classics of the past 10 years. I mention it only to squash the
impulse at the root, because exaggerated expectations
shouldn't dissuade anyone from enjoying Beirut's best work,
chiefly the gorgeous triumph "Postcards From Italy", an
infectious, Rufus Wainwright-tinged love/death story accented
by loping majorette drumming, a menagerie of horns, and a
plucky ukulele lilt that mixes perfectly with Condon's airy
croon.
Elsewhere, "Bratislava" is a celebratory march for the
Slovakian capital-- a sweaty, saw-dusted cabaret jam with
Gogol Bordello. It's at moments like these, his vocals placed
further back in the mix, that you realize the kid sounds truly
authentic and captivating. In the bubblier chill of "Scenic
World", Condon arms the troops with dinky Six Cents & Natalie
Casio drum machines and brings them into Magnetic Fields and
Jens Lekman territory. It's two minutes of pretty pop, plain
and simple. At the end, amid horn flourishes, accordion, and
doubled vocals he sings, "I try to imagine a careless life/ A
scenic world where the sunsets are all breathtaking"-- he
holds the last word, letting it swoon and flutter, like
Morrissey with a hammer-and-sickle Band-Aid on his nipple.
Time and again, the most powerful element of Gulag Orkestar,
and what ought to be emphasized, is Condon's acrobatic,
powerful, emotionally nuanced voice. It could carry any style
of music. Fixate for a second on the stuff he's doing on
"Rhineland (Heartland)". The lyrics are dopey, but his trills
and whirls are mind-blowing. Pairing these melodies with
Eastern European accouterments in lieu of standard guitar-pop
creates an obvious appeal. Still, the question ought to be
asked: Are the songs really so incredible or do they simply
mimic and mine musical traditions unfamiliar to the average
indie rock fan? That said, the best songs here are a joy and
the average and ho-hum tunes even have a thick and
aesthetically appealing atmosphere-- in other words, it's an
impressive and precocious debut.
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CD1
01-The Gulag Orkestar [04:40]
02-Prenzlauer Berg [03:47]
03-Brandenburg [03:39]
04-Postcards From Italy [04:18]
05-Mount Wroclai (Idle Days) [03:16]
06-Rhineland (Heartland) [03:59]
07-Scenic World [02:08]
08-Bratislava [03:17]
09-The Bunker [03:13]
10-The Canals Of Our City [02:21]
11-After The Curtain [02:56]
CD2
01-Elephant Gun [05:45]
02-My Family's Role In The World Revolution [02:08]
03-Scenic World [02:53]
04-The Long Island Sound [01:19]
05-Carousels [04:23]
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54:02 min