A curious one this, an album of two seemingly unrelated parts.
Beirut – March of the Zapotec and Real People: Holland
http://www.beirutband.com/ http://www.konkurrent.nl/
A curious one this, an album of two seemingly unrelated parts. For the first half of the album March of the Zapotec, Zach ‘Beirut’ Condon employs a Mexican funeral band whilst in the second (credited to his pre-Beirut alias of ‘Real People’ and labelled Holland) he instead harnesses homemade electronica. One half sees collaboration with a large group of musicians: the other half, solo bedroom experimentation.
On the first half of the album it is the Mexican brass that really stands out, warm and beautiful and a perfect foil for his Scott Walker-ish vocals. Whilst the 30 second opener El Zocalo suggests a festival feel, there is a mournful magnificence to most of the tracks, reaching it’s apogee in The Akara. On that track in particular, his rich vocals marry perfectly to the warm brass sound. This part of the project would seem to more obviously fit in the Beirut canon. He has previously shown Francophile tendencies on The Flying Club Cup, whilst his debut Gulag Orkestar reflected on the the folk music of the Balkans. Within this context, the employment of the lads from Mexico fits into the template of a troubadour who is constantly searching for the exotic.
On brief inspection, the second part of the album would seem atypical of his approach, with only the accordion sound of The Concubine really fitting with the world music that Condon normally embraces. Mostly, it is a collection of bedroom pop, whose most obvious interest is The Magnetic Fields. It doesn’t quite live up to Stephen Merrit’s output… That voice, and his musical approach – the constant playing with time signatures – marry the two halves of the LP together.
One of the finer aspects of this half of the album is that his vocal lines subtly become part of the music. The aforementioned The Concubine is the finest of this part of the set, with the multi-tracked vocals on opener The Prostitute from Marseille and the multi-tracked vocals of My Wife, Lost In The World also impressing. Sadly the whole thing is finished with the rather flimsy No Dice which doesn’t live up to the rest of the album and especially the impressive first half.
Words: Rover