The story of the Beirut is sometimes similar to a fairy tale, a fairy tale not always with a happy ending, marked by ups and downs that have put to the test the leader of the band, Zach Condon, a story where the fundamental chapters are represented by the passion of the American musician for the sound of the brass band European and Balkan, from an injury that forced him to abandon the guitar for a more handy Ukulele and by an unexpected and well-deserved success for a formation that has marked the Chamber-pop music with the album “Gulag Orkestar”.
After eight years spent ordering mental and physical problems, and after the little encouraging incursions in the synth-pop of “No no no”, it was not easy for Zach condon the slope. The good news is that the Beirut seem to have found inspiration and the desire to continue to explore new sound languages. And it is precisely from the rediscovered harmonic vein and by the most spacious instrumental structure of the 2023 album, “Hadsel”, which takes its cue “A Study of Losses”, a project that confirms the nomadic nature of the American band.
After the infatuation for European culture, including Italy, and in particular for the Balkan one and for the Chansonnier French, Zach went first to Norway, and now in Sweden.
“A Study of Losses” is a work that acts as a soundtrack for a Swedish circus show, focused on the novel “Verzeichnis einiger verluste” (or if you prefer “an inventory of Losses”), written by the German Judith Schalansky, a book that deepens the links between memory and those disappeared realities: that they are animals, architectural works or natural places, what is natural. For the author it is that common sense of loss and loss that shakes the human soul. It is understandable that Condon has taken the entire project to heart, having lived the trauma of loss and recovery of the voice following throat problems, which have lasted for over five years.
“A Study of Losses” brings together eleven songs and seven excellent instrumental, for fifty-seven minutes, where the various souls of Condon peeps, between pages where winds and waltz times dust the glories of “Gulag Orkestar” (“Villa Sacchetti”), delicate folk-pop that renew the link between the Beirut and the Magnetic Fields (“Forest” Encyclopedia “), Fulgid Synth-Pop much more cohesive and inspired than in the past (” Guiricke's Unicorn “) and romantic momentum that continue the speech undertaken with” Hadsel “, with the organ that excels in the suggestive” Sappho's Poems “.
In “A Study of Losses” they coexist without trauma or dissonances both the fascinations of synths and those anthropological folk sounds that have always been fundamental for the Beirut brand. The powerful descriptive nature of “Disappearances and Losses” and the engaging minimal-pop of “Ghost Train” therefore go hand in hand with a melancholy “Moon Voyager”, which winds in a riot of voices, ukulele, trumpet and accordion, and an idyllic “Tuanaki Atoll”, which tells the story of a disappeared atte inhabitants, whose peaceful nature was so high that it does not conceive in their vocabulary terms such as war and murder.
In the charming journey through the forgotten and lost beauties, the Beiruts quote not only architectural delights – the aforementioned “Villa Sacchetti” – but also icons of the cinematographic world (“Garbo's Face”) and extinct animals (“Caspian Tiger”).
Baroque arias, church organs, brass, ukulele and an instrumentation that brings together ancient and modern are the primary elements of a highly suggestive work, in some moments even playful and bizarre (the exotic rhythm of “Man's 7 Books”), a disc with a strong narrative spirit.
Despite the non-attractive premises (the aforementioned soundtrack for a theatrical-city show), “A Study of Losses” is a confirmation of the peculiarities of the Beirut, one of those bands that remain identifiable at the first listening without ever playing predictable. Zach Condon has not lost curiosity or that sense of adventure and risk that he has dispense in twenty years of career. The future of the American band is still rich and bright.
11/05/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
