Beirut - The Flying Club Cup

Beirut’s debut, Gulag Orkestar, was my second favorite of 2006. It was a rich and unpolished, and Beirut mastermind, Zach Condon, was only 20 years old when the album was released.

Like Johnathan Safran Foer’s brilliant novel, Everything is Illuminated, Gulag Orkestar plays on American curiosity surrounding post-Cold War Eastern Europe. The strength of both debuts was their vivid imagination, focusing more on the tribal motifs, with Beirut’s music examining Balkan nomads and Foer focusing on a Jewish shtetl in Ukraine. While Everything does touch on present-day Ukraine from time to time, Beirut is content to dwell in a world untouched by American influence. When I lived in the Balkans in 2001, Balkan popular music was more likely to be turbo-folk, a horrific blend of dance-pop and nationalist anthemics.

Condon’s follow-up, The Flying Club Cup takes that imagination West, but not too far. While there are still gypsy remnants, especially in the album’s first two tracks, Flying Club is predominantly rooted in French lounge. “Forks and Knives (La Fete)”, waltzes in on strings like an opening shot of the Eiffel Tower in a cartoon. “Un Dernier Verre (Poure la Route)”, conjures images of a piano bar in Marseilles. “Cherbourg” and “Nantes” are French cities, for Pierre’s sakes! “Guyamas Sonora” breaks the pattern, but it’s essentially a Gulag redux.

Condon’s songwriting has grown in the last year, but Flying Club is lacking. With a 40 minute run time, it’s only a track’s length longer than Gulag Orkestar, but feels more tedious. Where Condon’s first effort sounded spontaneous and joyful, the new album gives the sense Condon was recording because he’s a musician now, and he has to.

Besides “Nantes” and “Guyamas Sonora”, nothing really stands out. Flying Club is good, consistent songwriting, and there’s nothing here to be ashamed of, but coming off the breath of free air Gulag Orkestar provided, I hoped for a bit more.