NYLON - October 2007 - (Page 102) One of Zach Condon’s arms is shorter than the other, which he demonstrates by propping his elbows up on a nearby table. The wünderkind behind Beirut is camped out in his trumpet player’s Williamsburg apartment, where the wind barrels through open windows, only slightly cooling the summer heat. The band’s costumer, who is gathering her belongings to leave, attests that Condon’s peculiar limbs make him a nightmare to dress. Condon, though, clearly finds them just delightful, much like he sees joy in many things that, to others, are broken, forgotten, or shameful. “My parents met in a food stamp line,” he says. “My mom was embarrassed to tell me, but I think it’s the most romantic thing I ever heard.” At just 21, Condon is already steeped in myth—a high-school dropout from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who decamped to Europe as a teen (“New Mexico is such an isolated place,” he says. “You can hang out in a parking lot drinking 40s or you can go hiking in the mountains or you can hide in your room making music. That’s the option I chose”), he has the eloquent romanticism of someone four times his age. His music is mournful and lilting, full of horns and accordian: Beirut’s live shows border on mayhem and Condon’s voice is—perfectly, heartbreakingly—full of all the care and tenderness an old man might reserve for serenading young lovers who’ve elected to spend their last dollars on a candelit spaghetti-and-meatballs dinner. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY Beirut mastermind Zach Condon is a lover, not a fighter. By Kate Williams. Photographed by Leonard Greco Beirut’s first album, Gulag Orkestar and the Lon Gisland EP, which followed soon after, were embraced by critics, bloggers, and fans, and the resulting frenzy caused Condon to push himself too hard, collapsing halfway through the band’s first tour, and forcing him to cancel the remaining shows. “I just kept saying ‘yes’ to everything, because to me it was such a shock that people wanted to hear me,” he says. “Eventually I was just falling apart at the seams. It was like a video game, I couldn’t see moving cars, everything was just really strange. I was convinced that I had some horrible disease or a brain tumor, but I talked to a doctor, and he told me it was just because I hadn’t slept in two months.” He’s since slept, recovered, and recorded another album, The Flying Club Cup, which is as gorgeously buoyant and melancholic as one would expect from a band that Condon named after a beautiful city in a war-torn region. Beirut has just finished touring in Europe, where Condon set up a home base in Paris to avoid the dislocation he experienced the first time around. He reserved plenty of time for hanging out with friends, including doing a show with the Kocani Orkestar, who he calls “my favorite Macedonian gypsy brass band ever.” “One of the guys taught me how to fix a trumpet with a beer bottle,” he says. “Onstage at Glastonbury, I was swinging my trumpet and I tossed it aside and banged the hell out of the bell…but this guy just sculpted it, and it’s perfect!” This is Beirut in a nutshell: the sound of a trumpet, broken on stage at the world’s largest music festival, and fixed, later, in the back of a small smoky club in Paris, with a glass bottle. Beirut’s music has often been described as Balkan; Condon sees it as pop, as is wary of putting himself in the category of music that he loves. “I love talking about gypsy music, but at the same time I feel weird being associated with it,” he explains. “There is something about the sound, it’s so bittersweet. You can play a song at a wedding and it will sound so happy and joyful. And then you can hear the same song at a funeral and all of a sudden, it’s the saddest song you’ve ever heard.”
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