Beirut - The Gulag Orkestar (4AD)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
Whoa, keep your knickers on! Why are you reviewing this now, if it's been out for ages (that's you, crying)? Well, because this is the official UK release with the bonus 'Long Island EP', that's why. But the fact that some of you may already know how brilliant this album is really does make my job harder.
Although this is in essence the work of one 19 year old Zach Condon, with the help of the man with currently the most prominent of Midas touches (A Hawk & A Hacksaw, Neutral Milk Hotel), Jeremy Barnes, I can after this imagine Beirut as a large band marching through a condemned village in the middle of a hot country encouraging passers by to join their vaguely political (they have to be to survive) cult, one striving to find a better land. A duo in person, communal in feeling.
'The Gulag Orkestar' is not the most multifaceted album on the planet, which means on first listen it can get a bit tiring, but the very fact that it manages to keep up its intensely sad but proud orchestration itself is really worth sticking with it for. There's never a point where the aesthetic focus slips, which isn't to say that there may not be any points where you'll find yourself tiring of it, but it's precisely albums like this that you can keep coming back to again and again just for their sheer originality and power of their sound.
I think one of the keys to this strength and inventiveness is that although it is sad - almost tragic in places - it's also deeply aggressive, possessive of a sound of empowerment that really transfers. It's largely created by the militant percussion and stabbing yet wavering trumpets, but the wailing, layered vocals are what truly works most out of all these elements. Condon shows he's willing and able to apply himself to the closest instrument to him to add to this passionate, overwhelming projection of tragedy.
The most prominent instrument on the record is indeed that trumpet, sounds (as most of the instruments here are) which are layered to the very edges of your ears. But very occasionally the sound is accompanied by the much more synthetic tone of a Casio keyboard, and although I can't see Beirut taking a turn into experimental brass band electro it shows the lad is not ruined by any nonsense, purist ideal that will cripple him in the future. 'The Gulag Orkestar' really is an album worth owning, one which, I promise you, you will come back to many times over.
Artists in this article: Beirut
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment