BEIRUT - March Of The Zapotec / Realpeople: Holland

One eye on the present, one on the musical past of the now-established indie-kid Zach Condon, in this new and unusual release under the name Beirut. This isn't actually an album but a double EP, which on one hand gathers the fruits of his latest exploration of traditional music conducted around the world, and on the other dusts off old home recordings made under the name Realpeople, dating back to before his debut "Gulag Orkestar" and thus before his ethno-folk breakthrough.

Of the two EPs, the first, "March Of The Zapotec", is certainly the more significant one, and the one that allows us to place Condon's musical evolution in context, since it documents his most recent journey into the traditional culture of a given geographic area. This time his destination was Mexico, but, as in the previous cases of the Balkans and Central Europe, his attention focused exclusively on the brass-band aspects of local music, resulting in sounds comparable to the rest of Beirut's discography, save for a touch that's only partly "Latin" and a vein that's less jaunty but equally grandiose, this time shaped by a collaboration with a nineteen-piece funeral band from the Mexican region of Oaxaca. Funeral hymns and seemingly cheerful marches alternate across the EP's three songs and three instrumental fragments, all marked by the imposing march of the horns and only occasionally crowned by that ballad-like pacing and attention to melody that in "The Flying Club Cup" signaled real growth in Condon's songwriting.

Syncopated rhythms and a subtle nostalgic streak, in which Mexico and Europe seem to blur together, form the frame within which Condon channels the many ideas of his music and a songwriting that only in the excellent "The Akara", and partly in "La Llorona", confirms a heightened melodic sensibility and a level of care that goes beyond mere sound, which by now has already been sufficiently defined in his previous work.

The second EP looks radically different, its tracks revealing Condon's teenage passion for synth-pop, which had already surfaced in a couple of moments on his debut album. Here, though, the toy piano and analog playfulness take over, resulting in a series of sounds and scattered vocal lines without much structure, which, despite all the mitigating innocence of their composition, end up monotonous and at times even banal.

Better, then, to return to the present and follow Condon's trail toward the next stop on his musical-tourism itinerary, hoping perhaps for a continuation of the maturation process found in "The Flying Club Cup" and only marginally present in this double EP, amid too much filler and not-yet-realized attempts to point the lens of discovery toward further, uncharted musical traditions.

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17/02/2009