Track Listing

1. The Gulag Orkestar
2. Prenzlauerberg
3. Brandenburg
4. Postcards from Italy
5. Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)
6. Rhineland (Heartland)
7. Scenic World
8. Bratislava
9. The Bunker
10. The Canals of Our City
11. After the Curtain

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1983 in Music
• Released on: 2006-05-09
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
While it may sound like an entire Balkan gypsy orchestra playing modern songs as mournful ballads and upbeat marches, Beirut's first album, Gulag Orkestar, is largely the work of one 19-year-old Albuquerque native, Zach Condon, with assistance by Jeremy Barnes (Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw) and Heather Trost (A Hawk and a Hacksaw). Horns, violins, cellos, ukuleles, mandolins, glockenspiels, drums, tambourines, congas, organs, pianos, clarinets and accordions (no guitars on this album!) all build and break the melodies under Condon's deep-voiced crooner vocals, swaying to the Eastern European beats like a drunken 12-member ensemble that has fallen in love with The Magnetic Fields, Talking Heads and Neutral Milk Hotel.

Pitchfork, May 4, 2006
stunning spring-to-summer gypsy-cum-klezmer pop...beautiful and disarming

I Guess I'm Floating, May 3, 2006
...awe-inspiring, wonderous, almost intangible composition of raw talent, emotion, and complexity, reminding us why we listen to music..

Customer Reviews

Ugly
Admittedly, I'm not a music expert. But I know what I like, and this is not it. It's about as ugly as music can get. Didn't enjoy it at all.

Transporting
Beirut has quickly joined the ranks of those artists whose music I listen to as I'm writing. It's high praise. What it means is that this album puts me in a frame of mind that unfetters my imagination. While establishing this state, though, the album doesn't insist upon itself; it's not aggressive. Like some songs you grew up hearing in your grandmother's kitchen, this collection creates a kind of nostalgia for things you can't quite remember. I love it.

Best new music I've heard in a long time
I had been getting pretty bummed out lately about not being able to find much, what I would call, "amazing" new music. I found a lot of stuff that was, "pretty good" and, "not bad" but nothing really knocked me out like some music had in the best. Then this little delight came along. This album is not some lame and failed attempt to merge old sounds with new. No sir, this is old plus new equals something totally unique and amazing. If you in anyway like the sad and beautiful sounds of old eastern European gypsy accordion horn melodic madness, and enjoy Neutral Milk Hotel, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, or any of those types, then you probably already own this CD. If for some reason you don't already have this, then stray no farther, come back and be fed. Genius.