NEW BEIRUT!!! "My Night with a Prostitute from Marseille"

HANK ALTOGETHER:

Please excuse the total fanboy title to this post. It's just, well, I've been waiting for this for a long time. Condon and co. shut down the European leg of their tour and Condon promised a pretty sizable change in direction. Guess that whole 20-odd person band was a bit more than bargained for. The change in sound lure was intriguing tho. Would Beirut turn away from the Balkanized, Jacques Brel of The Flying Cup Club? Then we found out that there was a band before Beirut, The Real People, Condon's moniker pre-Beirut who released a 21 track ELECTRONIC album called The Joys of Losing Weight. I've heard it and let me dispell any notions of the idea of electronic here. It's a collection of synth beats, blips, and bumps that sound like a teenager playing around at home (which was, of course, what was going on). It didn't have the raw bacchanialian feel of Gulag Orkestar or the polished yearning of The Flying Cup Club. Though I am a huge Beirut fan (just see my last.fm page), I was really glad to know that Condon had moved away from The Joys of Losing Weight.

Then came a split 7" with Calexico which featured "Interior of a Dutch House."



This track seemed to mark the middle ground between The Real People and Beirut. It's got the electronics but they give way, accentuate, and enhance the horns. It's sheen and shimmer with the rawness of Beirut's trademarked eastern euro indiefolk. I was hoping that this was the way everything would move, until I heard Condon's latest concoction: My Night With A Prostitute From Marseille.

Gone are the horns. Gone are the excessive percussion and the dramatic flair and we're left, again, with the electronic soundscape. More refined than with The Real People but feeling distant enhancing the alienation that the title suggests. Condon's gift is not only in adapting sounds into his own distinctive voice, but also in bringing intimacy, warmth and heartache in one pleasing sonic concoction. Condon's vocals are among the most evocative of musicians working today, belonging in the same sentence as Jeff Mangum, Tom Waits, Antony, and even the late, great Nina Simone. And his voice (still) shines on this track, it's the rest of it that isn't quite doing it for me.

But I'll give it a few more spins and hope that I turn around.