Beirut/Real-
People:

March of the
Zapotec/Holland
(Ba Da Bing!)

In an interview with The Stranger last May, Beirut
bandleader Zach Condon let drop a couple of relative bombs: one, that
his older brother Ryan ghostwrote roughly half of the band’s lyrics,
leaving Condon free to concentrate on melodies, and two, that Condon
had been recording new material in Oaxaca, Mexico, for an upcoming and
as-yet-unannounced record. That record would become March of the
Zapotec, one half of Condon and company’s new double EP, the other
half of which, Holland, is attributed to Realpeople, a
home-recording pseudonym for Condon that predates Beirut. Whether these
two EPs deserve different aliases is debatable—both sound
unmistakably like Beirut, thanks largely to Condon’s distinctively dour
tenor—but they are definitely two discrete, and unevenly
rewarding, records.

March of the Zapotec was, true to its title, inspired by
Oaxaca’s funereal brass bands, and Beirut’s sprawling ensemble ably
bend such processional dirges and tentatively heartening oompahs to the
service of Condon’s lovelorn laments. The result doesn’t differ much
from their previous albums. “La Llorona” takes its name from a grim
Spanish-American legend (“the weeping woman”), although Condon’s (one
of them or the other) vague and sparse lyrics could apply to any number
of tragic fictional femmes fatales. The EP’s two other lyric numbers,
“The Akara” and “The Shrew,” are both perfectly gratifying, though
nowhere near as powerfully ear-worming as Beirut’s best songs.

Holland begins promisingly with “My Night with the Prostitute
from Marseilles,” the strongest song in this collection. Condon
wistfully intones the refrain, “And we believed her then, oh, oh,” over
a muted kick-drum pulse and burbling keyboard arpeggio that sounds
lifted from a Final Fantasy menu screen (not entirely a bad
thing and a familiar sound to those who picked up Beirut’s
Pompeii EP). Not only the best song here, “My Night” is among
Condon’s best compositions period, and one can imagine Beirut fleshing
it out with the full live-band treatment to spectacular effect.

The rest of the EP, though, can’t live up to the sublime opening
song. Where Zapotec‘s instrumental interludes pleasantly bustle
with activity, the Casio-esque drum patterns and aqueous keyboard tones
that pad Holland‘s lyrical moments, only occasionally pierced by
some horn stabs, start to feel flat after a while, although closer “No
Dice” does summon a wonderful empty-discotheque melancholy.

Taken as an album, March of the Zapotec/Holland would be a
letdown; as a pair of EPs, it’s enough to keep me eagerly hanging on
for Condon’s next move.
recommended

6 replies on “Album Review”

  2. Good god can’t we be done with this balkan/whatever worldmusic bullshit? I wish I could leave an audio comment it would sound just like every Beiruit song ever. “Da dah Da Dah, Blah, ba, Bleh (trumpet interlude) Blah, bletch..”
    the end

  3. La Llorona is a traditional, classic Mexican song in the repetoire of every band and singer in the nation. Lila Downs and Llasa de Sela, somewhat known in the USA, are but two singers who have released better versions in recent years.

    Translating the song to English is a standard exercise at Spanish language schools. It’s obvious the Condons haven’t made it to the subjunctive tenses yet.

  4. In every iteration, Beiruit is nothing more than a vainglorious grab for vindication by the high-school kids who didn’t make first chair in marching band.

  5. Most reviews of this album keep referring to the brass band as a “funeral” (in this case Eric calls it “funereal”) Oaxacan band. Where the fuck did you get this idiocy from? There is no such a thing as a “funeral” brass band in Mexico. They wouldn’t earn enough money to subsist. All brass bands are mostly for parties or festival. And they would play in funerals if you pay them. Why the fuck no?

    Stop repeating/propagating nonsense.

  6. “Where the fuck did you get this idiocy from?”

    From Condon himself, in this interview:

    The story is this: I was going to do this soundtrack, but I ended up not doing it because they wanted more of a string quartet kind of feel and I couldn’t do that. But the reference material they sent me was all from the far south of Mexico, in Oaxaca. It was all these bands that consisted entirely of Zapotec natives and they were all doing these kind of dirgey funeral marches with 17-piece brass bands. There was something so naive and martial in that music that I really fell in love with. It had nothing to do, actually, with mariachi or norteño. To be honest, it sounded more like what klezmer music is supposed to be or something. The raw exposed nerve of the music really struck a chord with me, maybe that will do it some justice.

    Also, a funereal band is not necessarily the same thing as a funeral band.

Comments are closed.