Stewart Mason, All Music Guide 2006

The best album to come out of Albuquerque since the Shins decamped for the Pacific Northwest, the debut album by Beirut (aka New Mexico-born 19-year-old singer/songwriter Zach Condon) bears an immediate resemblance both to Denver's DeVotchKa and the current passions of the Athens, GA, crowd formerly associated with the Elephant 6 stable. Like DeVotchKa, Condon is heavily influenced by Eastern European folk music and, to a lesser extent, the mariachi trumpets and Latin rhythms of the desert Southwest: the songs on Gulag Orkestar are lousy with mandolins and similarly plinky members of the string instrument family, accordions, horns, and hand percussion clearly played with dramatic in-studio arm flourishes. But like the Athens folks (some of whom appear here in a supporting role, most notably A Hawk and a Hacksaw's Jeremy Barnes), Condon isn't interested in mere approximations of traditional forms. Condon and friends use the folk instruments primarily as really cool-sounding textures, exotic backdrops for Condon's melodic indie folk tunes and impressionistic lyrics. The lyrics, it must be said, are the album's most obvious flaw, clearly the work of a young, romantically inclined teen who has never been to Europe but has seen a lot of foreign art films about, like, Gypsies 'n' stuff. Ignore the clunky lyrics — easy enough to do since Condon is an unexpectedly appealing singer with a rich, mellifluous voice that, no kidding, recalls the great bel canto crooners of the pre-rock era (along with a little Nick Cave) — and Gulag Orkestar is an infinitely more appealing album.

Allmost Cool

Almost Cool, May 4th 2006

Largely the work of an ambitious youngster named Zach Condon, Gulag Orkestar is an indie rock album filtered through the mind of a teenager who dropped out of high school to travel across Europe and soak in as much culture and music as possible. The result is something that sounds a bit like the Microphones crossed with Neutral Milk Hotel. It might be the only rock album you hear that doesn't contain any guitars, and it conveys an emotional and worldly power of the likes I've not heard in some time.

Largely inspired by Balkan folk music, the album moves through mournful ballads and more upbeat tracks (that sound more like the work of a 10-plus member ensemble) with ease, layering horns, stringed instruments, ukeleles, mandolins, glockenspiel, drum, organs, piano, and other percussion under the soulful vocals of Condon himself, who has a similar range and style as Andrew Bird. The disc opens with the album-titled track of "The Gulag Orkestar," and after some warbling horns and cascading piano, the track turns into a shuffling march that finds Condon soaring over the top of it all with his rich croon.

The album really hits stride with the gorgeous "Bandenburg," which finds deft mandolins playing out over heaving drums and percussion as accordions wheeze and the track builds gracefully with delightful horn sections and layered vocals. "Postcards From Italy" follows, and it may very well be the best track on the disc, moving along with a playful opening section that mixes shuffling mandolin, piano and horns before shifting halfway through to a more delicate (and reflective) section that completely tugs at the heartstrings before bursting into a celebratory ending that's absolutely stunning.

The second half of the album finds Condon taking a few more chances, and amazingly he pulls things off just about every time. "Scenic World" uses a programmed casio-beat that sounds straight out of Magnetic Fields, but layers horns and accordion over the top for something completely unique while "After The Curtain" takes the non-traditional instrumentation and runs it through some filters, giving the track a slight electronic tinge without making it ever feel out of place. It seems like every year there's an album that comes completely out of nowhere and really stuns me, and this year that title is easily held by Beirut with Gulag Orkestar. An outstanding debut album, and easily one of my favorite releases of the year so far.

Ben Goldberg, Amazon.com

Product Description
While it may sound like an entire Balkan gypsy orchestra playing modern songs as mournful ballads and upbeat marches, Beirut's first album, Gulag Orkestar, is largely the work of one 19-year-old Albuquerque native, Zach Condon, with assistance by Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw) and Heather Trost (A Hawk and a Hacksaw). Horns, violins, cellos, ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiels, drums, tambourines, congas, organs, pianos, clarinets and accordions (no guitars on this album!) all build and break the melodies under Condon's deep-voiced crooner vocals, swaying to the Eastern European beats like a drunken 12-member ensemble that has fallen in love with The Magnetic Fields, Talking Heads and Neutral Milk Hotel.

Amp Camp

Amp Camp, H.R. Mermadon, May 1st 2006

Beirut is the creation of 19-year-old Albuquerque native Zach Condon. His first album, Gulag Orkestar, uses a wide variety of instruments including ukeleles, mandolins, accordions, glockenspiels, organs, and cellos (there are no guitars on this album.) The result is a distinct record of elegant and unconventional ballads.

Although Condon hails from New Mexico, Gulag Orkestar is more inspired by Balkan Folk music. Condon reportedly left high school to travel across Europe, which inspired him to make this record. The album has gotten much buzz because of the inclusion of Jeremy Barnes from indie rock legends Neutral Milk Hotel; but Condon holds his own on this record.

On “Postcards From Italy” Condon sounds more like a seasoned baritone than a teenage high school dropout. His voice soars over a humble mandolin riff as a lead trumpet complements his vocals. Gulag Orkestar is an enticing album both for its soothing nature and its unique approach.

RECORDED IN: Sea Side Studios, Park Slope, Brooklyn
UNUSUAL INSTRUMENTS: Glockenspiel, Horns, Ukulele, Violin, Mandolin, Congas, Clarinet, Accordion, Piano, Organ

Michael D. Ayers, Billboard.com, May 9th 2006

Beirut is the moniker of 20-year-old Brooklyn resident Zach Condon, a high school dropout who spent some time in eastern Europe soaking up the culture and music styles of the "old world." Beirut's MySpace page describes his music as sounding like "Jewish immigrants," which rings very true. "Gulag" is his first offering and is a gorgeous collection of traditional-sounding eastern European folk songs, which are accented by a horn section and accordion throughout.

Right off the bat, you realize this is serious music for serious listeners. Those familiar with John Zorn's projects will be reminded of the way he writes for trumpeter Dave Douglas, which means that Condon is blurring the lines between folk and jazz and his vintage influences quite well. Highlights include "Postcards From Italy" and the title track, both jangly, marching anthems, but with different styles that epitomize what Beirut is about: traditional, while still sounding immediate.

Beirut: Zach Condon. Additional personnel include: Jeremy Barnes, Heather Trost. Recording information: Sea Side Studios, Brooklyn, New York.

Mark Abraham, Cokemachineglow, May 19th 2006

Bite down too hard on these things and you’ll hurt your teeth, right? I mean, this is one of those blogs-all-over-it albums that sends its antennas etherward and, exiting the atmosphere, finds about 60 billion words of praise clinging to its orbit, which the physics buffs in the crowd will tell you should drag it back to earth. Welcome to CMG, Beirut. We find you absolutely charming, cute even, and would love to hold your hand.

I’m not going to disagree with the Internet that this is one of the most fascinating and enjoyable debuts of the year; it is, and anybody who finds it too sugary is on the wrong diet. Those tumbling Balkan rhythms are one of my favorite things you can do with sound, intersecting marches and waltzes and street parties like there was never any difference between the three. I’m a bit concerned, however, that these embellishments have become the raison d’ętre for writing about this album. Dude’s from Albequerque, right? He lives in Brooklyn. I get the Balkan association, sure, but every time I hear an accordion I don’t automatically think: “Budapest…” Abstract associations (how about a few more: Lebanon, Paris, Puerto Rico, Chile, Albania, Zaire, Ceylon, Prussia, Transylvania, Jupiter, Lansing) don’t do much to explain why this is good.

We can cross-colonize this thing all we want, but push too hard and we’ll miss all the borders Gulag Orkestar collapses and end up somewhere in the middle of nowhere, without a map to guide us home. At that point it just becomes an echo of ideas about Eastern Europe, rather than an album that effectively uses the instrumentation of Balkan horn ensembles to accent a set of really pretty pop tunes. And I know last week I threw “Postcards from Italy” into my own cultural stew, so I’m not denying the urge, or the value, but if [insert National modifier here] is all we can say about this album, then it’s no better than saying that Norah Jones reminds us of jazz, or Dave Matthews reminds of us music we actually like. Gulag Orkestar is a trillion national histories better than all of that shit, and I just don’t want to see it relegated to the dinner party dustbin advocated in planner rags like Redbook because it evokes something “fancier” than your normal indie album. We all want to be cosmopolitan, fine, but let your selection of cheese do the talking; this album is far more intimate than that photograph you’ve been waiting to enlarge to cover the empty space on your wall.

Because it isn’t just a placeholder. What makes it stand out, and what keeps it from being just a sub-par recreation of actual Balkan music is that, even with all of these instruments -- horns, drums, mandolin, bass, piano, more horns -- Zach Cordon’s voice maintains a close-mic’d intimacy (one that allows him to transcend his under-enunciation and pocket range) that is unique in the anatomy of indie. The arrangements are crisp and precise (he’s aided by members of Neutral Milk Hotel and A Hack and a Hacksaw), but his simple lyrics that recall traditional folk tunes and anti-modern values (a bit wispy, sure, but I don’t think this is an argument, so much as homage) provide a sultry focal point that is so convincing that…well, we can talk about twee all we want, but I haven’t heard another this year that is so forthright and realistic about having its heart on its sleeve.

“Postcards” is probably the finest effort here, but the forlorn shuffle of “Brandenburg” comes close, its horns thrumming over the bridge and coda, a gestalt mass of conflicted emotions. “Bratislava” buries Cordon in the mix; this thumping Balkan march has the grit of Fanfare Ciocarla, if not the speed. “The Bunker” is a pretty little number, all round-out choruses and pleasant acoustic accompaniment. “Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)” has one of Cordon’s more impressive vocal performances; his voice at times is double tracked and pitted against a harmony of horns, and the song itself winds up slowly, allowing percussion to enter at different intervals. The effect is interesting, and the instruments and voice all seem cordoned off from each other like you’re actually witnessing this performance in a street surrounded by the musicians. “Rhineland (Heartland)” churns over its stark, acoustic kick line. Both “Scenic World” and “After The Curtain” contain flitting and inversely anachronistic synth lines; the former is an album highlight, and by far the most joyous track.

So, yes: this is cuddly, warm and intimate, just like all your favorite blogs have said. It’s a little uniform, and given its half-hour run time that’s saying something, but overall I think Cordon has managed to do something special: place his own voice at the center of very interesting, if at times monotonous, arrangements, and allow its tone to speak volumes where his lyrics don’t, really. Which is very nice, but not necessarily the ghostwritten return of a certain indirectly related and treasured songwriter some have claimed it to be. It’s an entirely different, but very pleasant, animal. Perhaps a koala bear?

Sandy Boer, June 5th 2006

Weary, world-traveled music is often a genre reserved for old-timers who have, well, traveled the world. But just as a rare young writer can spin tales fraught with the kind of gossamer tensions that, in a normal human, take decades to develop, 19-year-old Zach Condon has conveniently skipped a lifetime’s worth of harrowing experiences on his way to creating some of the most compelling music this side of the Atlantic.

Condon foregoes the ubiquitous sounds of American indie rock for the sounds of a more distant pass and a simpler aesthetic. Instruments like the ukulele, the trumpet, and the accordion blend in a dizzying borscht, giving off a lively steam smelling somewhat of the former Soviet bloc. Witness the loping “Prenzlauerberg,” lead by skipping percussion and crisp accordion. When Condon’s haunting Rufus Wainwright-meets-Bonnie “Prince” Billy vocals enter the fray, it’s obvious the kid’s onto something – but when the trumpets cascade from somewhere overhead into thick layers, all considerations of quality are swept aside as the listener is treated with a mental image of a rickety train rumbling across the landscape of some Eastern European country, carrying women in their sundresses and their children in the stuffy little suits of the early 20th century.

“Bandenburg” offers a tense ukulele line that finds support with galloping percussion. Condon’s vocals raise the tension until the accompanying music melts away, leaving only the ukulele. Soon, though, the band returns, this time escorted by a triumphant trumpet line that recalls a bullfighter’s entrance into the ring.

“Postcards from Italy” is even better, offering the first real glimpse of a solitary Condon, devoid of the murky harmonizing favored on the first three tracks. This time around, a piano joins the fray, and the song’s myriad moving parts somehow march to the same beat, creating a patchy creature that lurches along gloriously. Towards the end of the song, the band melts away, leaving only the ukulele, hand drums, and a brilliantly affecting Condon, singing “I would love to see that day / that day was mine” right before the martial drums herald the most haunting trumpet melody I have ever heard. This moment surpasses even the impressive heights of the album so far, jettisoning with ease into the stratosphere of musical transcendence made all the more impressive for the fact that you’ve never heard anything quite like it before.

Other standouts include the glorious “Mount Wroclai (Idle Days),” the martial “Bratislava,” and album closer “After the Curtain.” The latter, along with “Scenic World,” represent notable departures from the album’s usual fare, featuring electronic beats and more pop-oriented melodies. Surprisingly, Condon is quite at home, deftly mixing the 20th-century sound with the decidedly antique flourishes of most of the record.

The album is not without its missteps, though. The second half of the album wallows in the shadow of the first, unable to conjure the absolute majesty of the first four tracks. Indeed, sometimes Condon shows a clumsy songwriting hand, as in parts of “Rhineland (Heartland)” and “The Bunker.” Usually these shortcomings are brief, but they are all the more frustrating for their situation among flashes of complete brilliance. Also, Condon’s lyrics often leave much to be desired. Luckily, these are often buried deep in his mumbled, layered deliveries, suggesting that his lyrical content is secondary to the moods he paints with vocal tones and inflections.

It is perhaps difficult to speak of this album as a debut, since it bears so many of the marks of an effort by a seasoned (and accomplished) musician; the music is so enchanting that it seems awkward to discuss it in any practical terms. Still, it makes Gulag Orkestar all the more remarkable that its complexities and nuances are the handiwork of a man of just 19 years. Condon has immeasurable promise; let us hope that, when pressured by all of the baggage that comes with such promise, he can drop it all and journey to the enchanted lands conjured by his music. I must admit it’s a pretty nice place to escape to.

Ruben James, Discollective, May 9th 2006

I’ve never heard anything quite like Beirut. Sometimes that can be mind-blowing… Sometimes that can be some dude banging a turkey leg on a trash can and, well, not so much. I’ve heard a lot of the ingredients of Gulag Orkestar—the overwhelming influence being Balkan folk music. Now, I’m by no means a world folk music expert… I took a couple courses in college. I really liked the Eastern European and Russian variety. It seemed to cast a spell over me like a Morricone soundtrack. But, alas, that was that. I never backpacked through Bulgaria or taught English in Serbia. I, more or less, forgot the creepy beauty that this brand of music possessed.

When I initially heard the first few tracks from Beirut’s debut I pretty much chalked it up to homage. However, not even half-way through the record I began to realize it was something entirely new. I thought, “This guy is crooning (a la Morrissey, Stephin Merritt, or old schoolers Ol’ Blue Eyes and Dino) over this sh*t!” By the time I heard “Postcards From Italy,” I was sold.

Who is this guy? Where is he from? Is this some crazy obscure re-issue that Ba Da Bing! Records got its hands on? Well, here’s the kicker: His name is Zach Condon and he’s 19 years old and from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Not that any of that really matters… It just shocked the hell out of me. Much of the beautifully thick layering is done by Jeremy Barnes of A Hawk And A Hacksaw and formerly of the legendary Neutral Milk Hotel. That’s not to distract from the seven instruments plus lead vocals that Condon lays down himself.


There are a few pauses in the gypsy parade to remind you what else you might find in young Mr. Condon’s record collection. Both “Scenic World” and “After the Curtain” have a decidedly Magnetic Fields flair. But, all in all, this is a truly unique album in spite of its familiarity. One that should be appreciated by more than those that will actually hear it.

Mark Griffey, Dusted Magazine, May 7th 2006

Gulag Orkestar starts at the end, so to speak, with a mariachi funeral march. It’s an odd way to begin your career, but 19-year-old Zach Condon already sounds closer to death than birth. Beirut’s brilliant debut album is full of grandeur and intimacy, with accordions, ukuleles and brass instruments complementing contemporary notions like drum machines and digestible song structures while simultaneously channeling the ancient appeal of Balkan folk music. On top of all this, or perhaps below, is Condon’s voice; the sullen croon lends a gravity to these songs that blows through each churning waltz and march like a gust across the Danube.


As the songs parade forward, they lend themselves to cinematic pastiche: the romantic “Prenzlauerberg” conjures images of ballroom dancing; “Rhineland,” the soundtrack to a battle in slow motion; “Bratislava,” the dance before a feast. Stephin Merritt and Scott Walker are obvious influences, singers whose taste for the maudlin and tragic is apparently to Condon’s liking. It’s up for argument what’s more surprising – that a 19 year old has managed to tastefully pilfer these pillars of pop, or that he wove their traits into foreign traditions so seamlessly.


Beirut is no stranger to Web-savvy music fans. Accolades have been steadily building around his “Postcard from Italy,” a leaked song that serves as a precise introduction. With Condon’s ukulele and A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s Jeremy Barnes’ martial drumming locked in casual groove, “Postcard” confidently broadcasts the vision of a boy with both ambition and the talent to back it up. At the age 19, Condon could be construed as precocious, but it’s just as likely that he’s an old soul. Perhaps when one mingles with traditions so hallowed, the spirits can’t help but take over. It’s hard to be a boy when you’re 1,000 years old.

Yancey Strickler, eMusic, May 9th 2006

For some, nothing is more bewildering than the present. Forget the future — for it will forget you — it's the routine of modernity that terrifies, sending us wistfully toward a non-existent past, nostalgic for a life that the cruelty of time prevented. To experience this later in life is understandable, but to be afflicted at the age of 19, like Beirut's Zach Condon, borders on criminal. And yet from this alienation arises Gulag Orkestrar, in my view one of the finest albums of 2006 thus far and one seemingly ready-made for the indie canon.

Backed by Jeremy Barnes, currently of A Hack and a Hacksaw and formerly the drummer for Neutral Milk Hotel, Condon strolls through Gulag Orkestrar's multi-instrumental estates with a certainty that could only come at such a tender age. Condon writes morose, quasi-baroque ballads that he arranges like Eastern European folk songs: accordion, multi-layered percussion rhythms, muted horns and numerous wordless syllables howled in protest toward the Balkan winds.

Neutral Milk Hotel's epochal In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is an obvious signpost, as is the mid-crescendo abruptness of Arcade Fire and the Luddite-rock of Tom Waits. But in its preciousness, Beirut ventures into territories more self-consciously traditional — the gypsy street march of "Bratislava," the opening title track, the arrangements in general — and, in an unlikely feat, immediate. There is an arrestingly soft beauty in the mourning horns of "The Canals of Our City" that renders classification gauche and denies self-consciousness. The song exists so that we need not consider why.

The same is true of "Postcards from Italy," which is looking like a staple of my mixtapes for years to come. Here Condon most succinctly bridges his affection for the old immigrant songs and the indie-rock world whence he has come. His voice phonograph-distant, Condon alluringly drawls melancholy over clap-trap rhythms and a simple ukulele jaunt of love and loss, honest topics for any era. But as much as "Postcards" stands out, it's just one amazing song of 11. Gulag Orkestrar is the best indie-rock record of the 19th century.

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly, May 26th 2006

How can this dense slice of exotic musical bohemia spring from the mind of a 19-year-old kid from New Mexico? Beirut's Zach Condon's startlingly accomplished debut album, Gulag Orkestar is far more redolent of 1920s Bucharest than modern-day Albuquerque, with its mournful accordion, funereally paced percussion, and ululating vocals; Condon's voice swoops and warbles like a Gypsy-caravan Morrissey, as if the young lad were actually standing in the wood-smoke air and cobblestone streets of the faraway and long-ago cities he sings of.

Killian Fox, The Observer, June 11th 2006

A 19-year-old from Albuquerque named Zach Condon was, while recording this album, possessed by an orchestra of inebriated Serbian gypsies staggering through the set of an Emir Kusturica film. It's the only plausible explanation for these 35 minutes of wonky, dishevelled magnificence enriched by Condon's warm, throaty croon and propped up by two members of A Hawk and a Hacksaw. From the first moment of faltering funereal horns, Gulag Orkestar is steeped in the blackest of Balkan sorrow, but the experience of listening to it, peaking in the transcendent 'Postcards From Italy', is almost unfeasibly uplifting.

Harmonium Music

Jill Hrubecky, Harmonium Music, May 9th 2006

Recently, I was on a Cinco de Mayo cruise. It left from the east side of 23rd Street in New York City, sailed down to the Statue of Liberty and back. Lucky enough to live in New York, I’m always running across people from different backgrounds and nationalities. This cruise was no exception. Granted, the clientele tended more towards the Latin American variety, but there were others as well. This one guy in the group I was with had a distinctly non-Spanish-speaking accent and looked as if he could be from either Chile or Croatia. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me, so I asked him, “Hey, where are you from, originally?” With a big smile, his response was, “I am the U.N.”

The same could be said for the band Beirut and the new LP Gulag Orkestar. A simple perusal of the song titles would be the first hint at something worldly. “Bratislava,” “Postcards From Italy,” “Brandenburg,” “Rhineland”…the music that brings those far-flung song titles to life does them more than enough justice. Awash in accordions, trumpets, and strings, Gulag Orkestar is introduced to you as a mysterious olive-skinned woman emerging from behind crimson velvet curtains, dancing slow and hypnotic, in some bar on a side street in Prague.

In reality, there is no velvet curtain, no exotic hometown. There’s really not even a band. Behind these luxurious, old-world songs is a 19-year-old from Brooklyn-by-way-of-Albuquerque named Zach Cordon. With some help from Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeremy Barnes and his A Hack and a Hacksaw band-mate Heather Trost, he has created one of the most intriguing albums of the year.

In a nutshell, Beirut sounds like a melancholic Andrew Bird fronting Devotchka on a rainy day with Belle and Sebastian’s Mick Cooke guesting on trumpet once in a while. Over the course of the album, Beirut aurally takes us through the canals of Venice, the mountains of Slovakia, the ballrooms of Vienna, and the gutters of Paris.

The title track opens the album and starts off as a devilish, ramshackle orchestra (orkestar?) sounds like it’s tuning up and chomping at the bit to unleash its power. Soon enough, the din quiets and a very determined piano stands stage center. The rest of the instruments fall in, paving the way for a possessed wail that enters from all sides. All of the songs, while more traditionally structured than the opener, have the same attitude and grandeur. Quirky is too lighthearted a word for it. Multi-layered sounds too clinical. Theatrical, perhaps? Whatever the descriptor, all the songs on this album most certainly have a presence.

The peak of the album comes smartly in the middle with “Postcards from Italy” followed by “Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)”. The former starts with simple strumming and Cordon’s lonely croon which is soon joined by a rattling march-esque drum beat, accented by a forlorn but hopeful trumpet. The latter saunters in on a gypsy accordion, initially accented only with vocals. A choir (no doubt made up entirely of Cordon), a trumpet, and a glockenspiel bring the song to its alluring and extended climax, daring you to resist swaying in time and joining in with the singer(s).

Granted, the album is not completely steeped in the deepest part of Eastern Europe. The beginning of “Scenic World” starts off with what seems like a cheesy Casio keyboard, set to a beat preprogrammed with the machine. Though, the horns, violins and such, which are inevitably brought in, keep it firmly planted in Beirut territory. The beginning of the last track, “After the Curtain”, sounds almost chill-out, techno-y, with some studio trickery involved, creating a stop-skip-loop. Soon enough, the keyboards are relegated to the background, and that voice kicks in. Incongruously enough, the sound of applause chimes in, to give the feeling of a live performance (I guess). To be honest, it does nothing for an otherwise starkly beautiful song. It’s a minor infraction.

Despite these nods to the modern day, what stays with you is the overall feeling of the album, the memory of the lush forays into the land of gypsies, Jews, and Slavs. A Europe that is miles beyond the Eiffel Tower and the Spanish Steps. The land of mystery and misery; the space where dreams and nightmares become indistinguishable.

During the last track, when Cordon intones, “What can you do when the curtain falls?” there is only one possible answer: press play again, and let yourself be taken around the world on this most intriguing of journeys.

Bob Ladewig, Lost At Sea, 2006

Internet hype can be a dangerous thing. After hearing about those damn Arctic Monkeys for so long, once I finally got a chance to listen to them I was extremely disappointed. I have learned that I have to search out the new stuff the second I hear about it, in order to forge my own opinion. If I’m late on the bandwagon for most hyped music out there, 9 times out of 10 I will hate it simply because of the letdown factor.

After reading about Beirut for a few weeks, I kind of stumbled upon listening to them. When I put two and two together and realized I was listening to 19-year old wunderkind Zach Condon and his band I immediately searched around the web for more of his music. One thing is for sure - in the case of Beruit there is good reason behind the hype.

Seemingly, with a mission of creating a full album without a guitar, Beirut has laid one of the most compelling soundtracks in indie rock this year. Amazing story-telling lyrics are backed by creative structures and instruments that give the entire album a once-in-a-lifetime feel; it is a series of strange combinations of sounds that give Gulag Orkestar its legs. It is beautiful and haunting while keeping a strong foundation in creative pop.

After researching the artist I discovered that a young Condon had dropped out of school to learn about life in the great and wide-open spaces of old Europe. While there he met a Serbian artist with a penchant for listening to Balkan Gypsy music all night long. This fellow made quite an impact on the (at the time) 16 year old Condon, who in turn began to pour himself into the writing of this beautiful masterpiece.

Having come across this information on the web, I am of course unable to verify its validity, but the one thing I can say is that the sounds encapsulated within this album lead me to believe that the back story is all factual. After all, such an interesting album could only be created from a story involving high school dropouts and Balkan Gypsies, right? This Renaissance man that is Zach Condon could never have created an album like this sitting alone in some basement apartment somewhere in New York... or could he?

From the opening notes of Gulag Orkestar to the beautiful finale of "After The Curtain," Condon's music takes the listener on a trip around the guitarless indie-world of orchestral pop, on camelback, running into sounds from all around this world, but with a concentration on Eastern Europe circa the 1700’s. There are plenty of mandolin-style stringed instruments and the classic sound of trumpets littered throughout the album, which serve to give it a grand, Old World feel.

While much focus will be placed on Gulag Orkestar's non-traditional instrumentation (and rightly so), one of the most surprisingly pleasant elements of the entire project Condon's voice. At nineteen years young, this crooner has the smoothness of Morrissey mixed with the deep drawl of Ladybug Transistor frontman Gary Olson. Though he may not have the experience in years, he more than makes up for it in the way he crafts his songs.

Brandon Stosuy, May 12th 2006

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.

Justin Cober-Lake, Pop Matters, June 1st 2006

Blogs, track-leaking, and peer-to-peer networks were built for albums like this one. Beirut sounds like the remnants of an eastern European caravan, but turns out to be mostly one kid (19-year-old Zach Condon). Pleasing Other, Gulag Orkestar has enough indie touchstones to make it approachable; when you sent that mp3 to your friend a month before the disc’s release date, you could expect that he’d have heard little along those lines, but that he’d like it. Firming up its place in indie and blogland consciousness, Jeremy Barnes performs on about half the tracks, bringing Neutral Milk Hotel authority to the project (even if you’re unlikely to go, “Wow, that’s totally a Barnes accordion line!"). A multi-instrumentalist with indie royalty connection and early underground buzz equals instant canonicity, but it might be worthwhile to consider the music itself.

The 11 tracks of Gulag Orkestar are very good, but not the stunning achievement you might be led to believe they are. Beirut is influenced by styles of music that bind together as “Balkan” (despite being named Beirut and titling songs after places throughout Europe). Even with a number of groups including “Balkan” or “gypsy” or “[clueless rockcrit word]” sounds into unified finished pieces that get catalogued under “rock” instead of “world”, there’s not been tidy genre movement described. Devotchka, Gogol Bordello, Man Man, and Storsveit Nix Noltes all create related but distinct music. It’s misleading to focus on the uniqueness of Beirut’s album. Dig it because you like it, not because there’s nothing like it.

Fortunately, Beirut’s album, while not a career-defining masterpiece, does hold up well against the hype and PBR-aided focus on the foreign. Gulag Orkestar maintains a consistent aesthetic even as the songs vary enough to stay interesting. The simplest way Beirut changes things up is by varying his time signatures. Even a basic alternation between 4/4 and a 3/4 pieces allows the album to expand its rhythmic work on both percussion and strings.

“Scenic World” marks the album’s furthest shift, opening with a toy keyboard riff that sounds like the point in a Nintendo game where you go into the town and don’t have to worry about being attacked. Fittingly, Beirut sings about feeling like “a tired dog licking his wounds in the shade”. The disc’s bloopiest, cheeriest sounding song isn’t a joyful celebration, but a moment of respite. It’s a needed one, as the album mostly maintains heavy tones, and an effective one, as Beirut doesn’t allow himself to escape the general feeling of the disc.

Unfortunately, the heaviness coming out of this track can feel a bit overbearing. “Bratislava” announces itself with horns and agitated drums, reminding us yet again of the importance built into these songs, heavy with meaning and emotion, and needing to remind us of that fact. It’s not that Beirut lacks precision in his craft, it’s that he occasionally lacks subtlety. Rather than building to climaxes or working his specific atmospheres, he too often indulges in an immediate presentation that leaves the listener little breathing room.

“The Bunker” succeeds because he restrains himself. Condon has a lovely voice, and he produces it to great effect, tracking it in rounds and with doubling to fill out the voices his large-band sound desires. That technique sets up the big entrance and slow march that changes the song after its first 90 seconds, and make its softer trumpet and ukelele conclusion an appropriate finish in its echo of the gradual growth of the piece’s opening. Tracks like this one show that Beirut has a gift for composition, arrangement, and production and suggest that, as he gains confidence, Condon might create a truly exceptional album.

To leave consideration of this album with an expectancy of future ones would do Gulag Orkestar a disservice, as it is quite good. He may be working within an excepted (if rarely discussed) style, but he’s forging is own vision, and he usually succeeds in making beautiful music. If there a few places for improvement, it’s only because those traits are worthy of being improved. Even if it sends us to too many pages in our atlas, Beirut’s debut suggests he’s someone we’ll travel with again.

Mike Rea, Salisbury Journal, June 6th 2006

The Neutral Milk Hotel album In the Airplane Over The Sea is one of the all-time classics of intelligent anti-rock, and that band never followed it up.

NMH's Jeremy Barnes, however, has a heavy hand in this album by 19-year old Brooklyn boy Zach Gordon, and it is as inventive as they come.

Comparisons to Airplane are inevitable, but that's not a bad thing.

continued...
Other comparisons include Andrew Bird, Tom Waits, Rufus Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens and, just possibly, Russian folk music (as suggested by the title).

This is a work of rare genius, with utterly compelling rock mixed through a few centuries' worth of music.

It rewards from the first listen, but is more habit-forming than nicotine.

There is no pigeonhole that would do this album justice, such is its level of creativity and surprise.

No fan of Waits or Sufjan could resist this album, but it should have a place on every right-thinking listener's shelf.

Whisper it, but it may even be better than Neutral Milk Hotel's album...

Jeff Siegel, Stylus Magazine, May 8th 2006

It starts, as all things should, with fanfare. A piano rumbles, a trumpet screeches, and they rise until, as all things do, they fall. Rumble turns to moan, screech to mewl, small victory to even smaller defeat. Notes go rotten and fall off the vine, to decay and reemerge as their own eulogy. A kick stomps slowly as the piano, accordion, and horns line up behind it; a pallbearer's march. A young man leads, crooning “They call it 'mine', and I call it mine” to anyone listening who might understand. But soon the grief turns, as it must, to muted celebration; the horns raise their muzzles in salute, shouting a herald toward the sky. What falls must also rise again.

The enormous and outsized will always get attention—nothing like a raging, screamed chorus or a gaseous explosion for simple catharsis—but nothing beats quotidian human drama, something straightforward and lived-in. It can be joyous and heartfelt, brutal and unbearable, and above all true, even if it's completely false. Zach Condon throws around a lot of very exotic, and very loaded, imagery for a guy from the desert southwest of the United States, things and places that I'm guessing he, like most of us, has only read about. Gulag Orkestar is filled with places whose very names exude a certain despair, mostly despite their true natures; hell, Beirut itself has been rebuilt to at least some of its former glory. But playing with exotic imagery from an unknown locale, however loaded or even tragic, is just as much the stuff of drama as using your own immediate experience. Just like pulling something from your dreams, it's no less meaningful for being factually inaccurate or physically impossible.

Much has been made of Gulag's component parts—its assimilations from French peasantry and those thieving Romany, for instance—but that misses the point. The sound, like the imagery, is second-hand, swiped from the Schwarzwald gypsy folk-via-Tin Pan Alley twirl of Kurt Weill, in spirit if not in actuality, and Condon and his cohort (including Neutral Milk Hotelier Jeremy Barnes and A Hawk and a Hacksaw's Heather Trost) take it a step further, sanding down those long, drifting melodic passages into the simple sucker-punch of modern pop. At its base, the unusual instrumentation—accordion, violin, trumpet, ukulele, drums, and vocals—are less genre signposts than an outline of the specific nature of the play; just an inversion of guitar-bass-drums, playing a fundamentally similar music to, say, guitar pop, but of a wholly unique character. Songs like “Postcards From Italy,” “Brandenberg,” and “The Bunker,” despite all their instrumental eccentricity and echoes of melancholy, are deeply easy-going, just one little four-note hook piled on another, placed just so; little pocket symphonies, equal parts Brian Wilson (“The times we had / Oh, when the wind would blow with rain and snow”) and Lech Walesa (“In my good times / There were always golden rocks to throw”). Even at its most openly “foreign”—“Prenzlaurberg,” named for an upscale bohemian section of Berlin, hews closer to a waltz-time sea shanty than anything else I can think of—the pop goes down easily and with a rare kind of clarity, even when it borders on the silly—“Scenic World” and its goofy little Fisher Price calypso retains a wealth of charm, and makes me giggle a little every time.

It's the simplicity that's the key; this could have been yet another pseudo-orchestral globe-straddling “epic” with every instrument on Earth thrown in just because, a bloated, meandering beast. But instead it's tightly focused, beautifully written, and totally without filler. It also could have been an air-tight bubble, too edited, too perfect, but everything is allowed to hang loose, to be a little ramshackle, to just breathe. It manages an open, unapologetic prettiness while never seeming delicate, like it'll break in your hands or blow away; Condon's warbly tenor has a full-throated authority even at its wispiest, and Barnes often sounds like he's hitting the snare with a closed fist. Young Master Condon seems to have an almost savant's ear for this stuff, like he just sits down and breezes through 11 of these things in just the time it takes to play them, like he's been at it forever, but he's just a kid—all of 19—and may well have even better in front of him. But for now, I guess, we'll just have to live with this lovely, unusual, and beguiling little pop record. It'll do nicely.

Brian Lopiccolo, 30music.com, May 16th 2006

This album is moving. Maybe it’s the gypsy-ish orchestra, the buoyant marching rhythms, or the sweeping operatic voice of 19-year-old Zach Condon, but something here is picking me up out of my seat and floating me on up into the atmosphere of the ethereal. Listening to the Gulag Orkestar gives you life; it brings back memories of lazy sun-drenched Sunday picnics on the Rhine and crackling wine-hazed campfire romances on the beaches of the Mediterranean. It makes you yearn for a different time, a different place, one less complicated by worries and woes—a time when everything was right and sunrises and sunsets served purposes other than when to rise and when to rest. Made up entirely of piano, horns, violin, accordion, cellos, ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiels, drums, tambourines, congas, organs and clarinets, with the help of Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel) and Heather Trost (Hawk and a Hacksaw), Beirut bring you into their musical grace—a place of sadness, yearning, ache, and melancholy, surrounded by magnificence—and they never let go.

It would be a safe guess to say that you probably have “Post Cards From Italy” lying around in your iTunes library somewhere, downloaded from your favorite hype-inducing blog—and you may have even liked it, but to understand and appreciate it in the manner it deserves, one must listen to it in the context of the album. Similar to an Arrested Development one-liner—it’s semi-funny on its own but in the flow of the show it slays. The opener, “The Gulag Orkestar,” will set you off immediately with its slow waltz cadence and horn accompaniment. Condon croons for the first two thirds of the song and when he finally sings the only two lines with words, the Magnetic Fields comparison immediately make sense. “Prenzlauerberg” and “Bandenburg” (Germany cities) continue in the same vein and perfectly lead into “Post Cards from Italy.” The beautiful song shows Condon at his best, allowing his voice to out shine the instrumentation—an easy ukulele, slight drums, and a horn chorus. The track is easily one of the best singles of 2006 and anchors the album impeccably, giving Gulag Orkestar the heart it deserves.

Unknowingly you might mistake Zach Condon as a native of some Baltic country across the Atlantic, but the better informed know that he actually hails from the deserts of New Mexico, Albuquerque to be exact. After dropping out of high school though, he lived over in Europe for a few years and that influence and experience is mightily apparent on this disc. From the track and band names, to the instruments, lyrics and tone—it all oozes foreign and mature construction, which is a testament to the young Condon’s abilities.

The later half of Gulag Orkestar sees more of the same; waltz-heavy breezy marching cadences and ukulele anchored melodies, all with a European tinge. Highlighted by “Scenic World,” a nice change of pace, it’s composed of a synthesized beats followed alongside by a bit of horns and Condon’s sometimes lacking, but always beautifully sung lyrics. The song is a refreshing break and is proof that Condon’s voice will shine through no matter what type of music he decides to sing to in the future.

Gulag Orkestar is definitely a different album, but it is deserving of the hype that has accompanied it. Zach Condon is someone to watch, so get his indie rock trading card now before prices skyrocket and then put it up on the mantle along side your Spencer Krug rookie and your signed Sufjan Stevens MVP 2005 cards. These kids are something special and I personally hope they take over the world (musically that is).

Paul Bozzo, Treble Media, Treblezine.com, May 15th 2006

Tucked away in a war-ridden corner of Europe lies a sense of music that has been as regrettably forgotten as the people and places that lie there. The Balkan powder keg has been kept in a dark shack in the basement of the world's concerns for the past 100 years, with the lands being fought on and over, used for territorial power and intimidation, but never appreciated for the joy that can be found below the nationalism, wars, genocide, and politics. It has had gleaming glimpses of notice in the past, but never having made waves, washed into the undertow of the global culture. Zach Condon threw it a lifesaver, and resurrected the jubilance of Eastern European music in Beirut's Gulag Orkestar.

Zach Condon, a sixteen year old from Albuquerque, went to Europe. He stayed there, almost forgetting about his Albuquerque life, and started living without care, sure of something to come, like a child playing with toys in a doctor's waiting room. Fond of music, he had written and recorded some "bedroom projects" back in his old life. While in Europe, he was introduced to the sound that would later inspire Gulag Orkestar, and finally was called in to see the doctor.

Gulag Orkestar is filed with images of drunken and quixotic conga lines parading through the edified phalanx of modern music. The opening track "Gulag Orkestar" introduces itself with a boisterous belch of horns, coming full force in a manner charmed for its lack thereof. It would seem that there must be a huge band behind the mic, a riotous group of drunkards who just so happened to find an empty recoding studio that they could party in for a couple of songs, but it's just Condon. With the exception of helping hands from A Hawk and a Hacksaw members Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost on some of the tracks, Condon's energy was enough to fill an album. "Bandenburg" is great testament to this energy, with a swift mandolin riff introduction to lead into. Even some of the more seemingly sedated songs burst with the speaker's spirit. On "Rhineland (Heartland)" Condon wails like a fisherman gliding along the Rhine River with a World War of a backdrop.

Zach Condon has shown the world something with Gulag Orkestar that sometimes goes forgotten, and at some of the most inopportune times. Yet it's likely that Gulag Orkestar will stand the test of time itself, pervading through even the worst.

© Frank Steven Groen