Beirut
The Flying Club Cup
(Ba Da Bing Records, 2007)

Zach Condon, the young man who records under the nom de musique of Beirut, seems to be a melancholy lad, and perhaps a bit of a control freak. On his two albums, last year’s Gulag Orkestar and the album at hand, The Flying Club Cup, Condon played almost all of the instruments—a dizzying mélange of ukulele, violin, trumpet, cello, piano, mandolin, glockenspiel, Eastern European tabla, organ, clarinet, and accordion. He also sings in a weary, mournful voice that’s often hard to understand, somewhere between a mumble and a croon. The back story says that Condon dropped out of his Albuquerque, NM high school at the tender age of 16 and wandered across Europe until he arrived at an undisclosed Eastern European location and fell under the spell of Balkan Gypsy wedding music made by bands like the Boban Markovic Orchestra, Fanfare Ciocarila, Ivo Papasov, and Yuri Yunakov. Gogol Bordello uses the same kind of arrhythmic beats as the basis for their manic gypsy punk assault, but Condon lacks the musical proficiency and familiarity with the tradition behind the music, so his take on those sounds is a bit shaky, which is one of the reasons his music has so much low-key charm.

Gulag Orkestar was one of the major indie successes of 2006, an off-kilter album of Balkan flamenco tangos delivered with the minimal aid of Jeremy Barnes and Heater Trost of A Hawk and a Hacksaw, who overdubbed percussion and violins onto Condon’s sprawling, sorrowful Eastern European-influenced love songs. At least they sound like love songs. It’s hard to tell for sure; there’s no lyric sheet and Condon’s mellow rumbling delivery is long on emotion and short on enunciation. Since he finished Gulag Orkestar he’s been living in Paris and apparently listening to a lot of Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour, writers steeped in unhappiness, pessimism, and an appealing kind of poetic gloom. The Balkan touches are still in evidence on The Flying Club Cup, but they’re diluted by the charming harmonious melodies of the French chanson and seasoned by traces of Latin cowboy rhythms.

“In the Mausoleum” is driven by a hiccupping piano, quavering Gypsy fiddles, a skewed Latin rhythm, and dark cello accents. The cryptic lyric adds another element of mystery to moody aura. “Cliquot” is a lament for an absent lover. Weeping accordion, Balkan tabla, Gypsy fiddles, and what sounds like a Mariachi horn section, are laid over a dirge-like waltz, while guest vocalist and co-collaborator Owen Pallet (also known as Final Fantasy) contemplates mortality and wonders, “What melody will lead my lover from his den?” Like many French songs, the tune is addressed to the world at large, rather than the object of his affection, increasing the song’s sense of alienation. “Cherbourg” is another despondent tune featuring an accordion waltzing with a trumpet and French horn. They’re slowly overwhelmed by a multi-tracked chorus of Condon’s wailing about falling through space and time due to his lover’s lack of interest. The vocals get lost in the code under a cacophony of horns and strings, but you get the picture of a drunken young man dancing off into the Parisian fog with tears on his face and perhaps a middle finger raised to the god of love. The album closes with the title track, another fractured waltz full of delirious piccolos, swooping strings, crashing percussion, and a rousing chorus that brings to mind the Byzantine hymn “Gloria in Excelsis Deo.”

The garbled lyrics seem to indicate broken dreams and heartbroken journeys undertaken to erase the memory of a failed relationship. The music on The Flying Cup Club is based on accordion, piano, and organ with French horn and boozy euphoniums complimenting the touches of Balkan trumpet that still turn up sporadically in the mix. Musically, it’s more pop and slightly less eclectic than Condon’s debut, but still appealing to fans of sullen, bleary-eyed late night introspection and unfathomable musical mash-ups.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]