Beirut’s newest release, The Flying Club Cup, has been haunting me for more than a week.The album, released by Ba Da Bing Records earlier this month, is sentimental, pretty, melancholy, and eery. And I can’t get enough.
The 21-year-old Zach Condon, the brains of Beirut, made the album as an homage to the culture, music, history, and fashion of France, where he moved after spending two years studying Balkan folk music and Eastern European music scales. The album is an indie kid’s interpretation/infatuation with nostalgic notions of European sounds and styles; sort of like a hipster marching band parading through the Old World.