Gulag Orkestar

Admittedly, I'm not a music expert. But I know what I like, and this is not it. It's about as ugly as music can get. Didn't enjoy it at all.

Beirut has quickly joined the ranks of those artists whose music I listen to as I'm writing. It's high praise. What it means is that this album puts me in a frame of mind that unfetters my imagination. While establishing this state, though, the album doesn't insist upon itself; it's not aggressive. Like some songs you grew up hearing in your grandmother's kitchen, this collection creates a kind of nostalgia for things you can't quite remember. I love it.

I had been getting pretty bummed out lately about not being able to find much, what I would call, "amazing" new music. I found a lot of stuff that was, "pretty good" and, "not bad" but nothing really knocked me out like some music had in the best. Then this little delight came along. This album is not some lame and failed attempt to merge old sounds with new. No sir, this is old plus new equals something totally unique and amazing. If you in anyway like the sad and beautiful sounds of old eastern European gypsy accordion horn melodic madness, and enjoy Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, or any of those types, then you probably already own this CD. If for some reason you don't already have this, then stray no farther, come back and be fed. Genius.

Beirut is the Indie-genre band headed by Zach Condon, a twenty-two-year-old native of Albuquerque who dropped out of high school at age sixteen to travel Europe. While there, Condon was irreversibly influenced by Balkan gypsy styles that are manifest in the group's music. Another style characteristic is the prominence of untraditional rock instruments--none of their songs feature the guitar but instead the ukulele, owing to a prior injury of Condon's that rendered him unable to wrap his wrist entirely around the neck of a guitar. Beirut's members are numerous, but among the most notable individuals are Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost, previous members of Indie accordion band A Hawk and a Handsaw. Beirut's 2006 debut album, Gulag Orkestar, consists of eleven tracks that alternate between melancholic gypsy-inspired songs including titular track "Gulag Orkestar" and "Prenzlauerberg," bubbly pseudo-pop beats "Postcards from Italy" and "Scenic World," and points in-between, most enjoyably "Rhineland" and "The Canals of Our City."
Gulag Orkestar is split between Beirut's two distinct styles--its patently Balkan east European folk style and its own unique effervescent ukulele pop. While Condon's low crooning voice is excellent in the latter milieu, it is difficult to appreciate in the former. Especially in "Bratislava," Condon's voice fades to the background as a distant repetitive mournful wail or echo, while cymbals and quavering musette-like trumpets occupying the musical foreground. The lyrics for these songs are inexistent--they are unintelligible as sung; moreover, they can be found neither in the album insert nor online. For this reason, they seem largely irrelevant. They are present only for the sake of there being words set to these songs, some semblance of verses. These gypsy songs are out of place in this album. I would expect to hear them as part of an interesting movie soundtrack or in some Turkish restaurant. In this different light, in fact, I would enjoy them very much. Beirut has previous band members of A Hawk and a Handsaw, which in turn drew influences from Colorado band DeVotchKa, a contributing group to the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack along with Sufjan Stevens. This style of music thus lends itself excellently to film albums, but not so well to a standard release, unless your quarry happens to be something ethnic and atmospheric.
Despite the seemingly out-of-place interludes, when Condon sings a Western-style song, everything comes together. Emotional, intelligible lyrics roll sweetly off Condon's soothing, low croon. In "Postcards from Italy," Condon's slow, contemplative, soothing voice inspires a personal analysis of the past. When he muses, "There were always golden rocks to throw / At those who... admit defeat too late," he induces his listeners to contemplate lessons learned from important but flawed people in their own lives. In "Mount Wroclai," Condon laments the emotionally unengaged life he might lead in the future. At the opening of the song he ventures, "And I know when time / Will pass by slow / Without my heart." As the song ends, he tells of a love so old that it has fizzled out, singing, "We grow fat / on the charms of our idle dreary days / Seen the shadows grow." Midway through the album, Condon addresses a midlife-crisis sort of question at an earlier age; he feels trapped, as if he were flowing down a one-way river. In "Rhineland," he sings in a subdued wail, "Life is all right / But I know / I would have nowhere to go." Finally, "Scenic World," the shortest but most notable song on the album, perfectly captures the relaxed introspective mood via imagery and simile. "When things don't feel right / I lie down like a tired dog / Licking his wounds in the shade," he sings to a quiet bubbling beat. "I try to imagine a careless life / A scenic world where the sunsets are all / Breathtaking," Condon ponders a bad day and consciously decides to improve it. Condon's lyrics, when significant, are introspective gold.
A great appeal of Beirut is its prominent use of unusual instruments including the accordion, cello, euphonium, glockenspiel, mandolin, organ, trumpet, ukulele, and violin. Only the final track, "After the Curtain," features vibrant electric guitar riffs, and even then they are overlaid by jubilant cascading marimba arpeggios. In every song, no particular instrument reigns dominant over any other. Each song features several different instruments prominently, but each has its own separate movement in which it is the main player. "Gulag Orkestar," "Postcards from Italy," and "The Canals of Our City" are showcases for the vibrato trumpets the likes of which I have never heard before. In "Mount Wroclai" and "The Bunker," the accordion holds the harmony with slurred alternating six-eighths march time; in "The Bunker" as well as "Bratislava," the accordion takes the forefront with its earthy, wonderfully-aged clarinet treble reeds, adding in beautiful embellishment. All songs save for "After the Curtain" feature Condon's light airy ukulele strumming. The synthesis of these unconventional and quirkily seductive sounds with Condon's low voice is truly a pleasure.
Aside from the glaring incongruity of the Balkan-style songs and its own alt-pop style, Gulag Orkestar was, for me, the musical experience of 2007. Condon's sincere lyrics are poetic dynamite and the band's compositing of numerous distinct instruments contribute to a wide range of effects that everybody can enjoy.

beautiful...i could listen to this cd over and over. i highly recommend it to anyone!