The notice of shock on Hadsel, Beirut’s sixth studio LP, isn’t a lot that Zach Condon has recorded an album on a distant Norwegian island with free entry to a church organ, it’s that he hasn’t carried out so earlier than. This sneaking feeling of familiarity is on the coronary heart of Hadsel’s comfy and infrequently underwhelming allure. Condon has, objectively, modified the Beirut sound because the Balkan brass days of Gulag Orkestar, his whirlwind 2006 debut. However his wealthy baritone croon, which swoops and curls round melodies like an eagle after a rabbit, is so distinctive, his brass preparations so stridently mournful, that he can’t assist however sound like himself.
Hadsel, named after the municipality wherein it was recorded, has its moments of reinvention. Using the Hadsel kirke organ, whose ministerial drones underlie a number of of the album’s songs, introduces an austere, baroque magnificence to the title monitor (particularly) that’s far faraway from the ultra-bright tones of a lot trendy pop music. For a blackened second, the listener is transported to the hostile magnificence and lengthy nights of a Norwegian winter, the chilly wind blowing round an icy wood church. However as quickly because the brass begins its stately name, we’re plunged proper again into the world of Gulag Orkestar et al.
On the similar time, the modular synthesizers and drum machines that made their bow on 2019’s Gallipoli are extra outstanding on Hadsel. “January 18th,” “Spillhaugen,” and the second half of “Süddeutsches Ton-Bild-Studio” tackle a borderline jolly, Switched-On Bach-style digital wobble, whereas “Stokmarknes” and “The Tern” are marked by writhing digital beats. However it nearly appears like Condon has used these components too nicely, weaving unfamiliar sounds round his lugubrious vocal so snugly that his invention slips by unheralded.
This isn’t essentially an issue, given the album’s lucidity and songwriting power. Condon recorded Hadsel at a time of nice private problem, after well being issues pressured him to minimize quick Beirut’s Gallipoli tour in 2019. Upon arriving in Norway, he threw himself into recording as if “misplaced in a trance”; when he later returned to Berlin, relatively than flip to his band for assist, Condon fleshed out the Hadsel recordings on brass, percussion, and ukulele. The ensuing sound isn’t precisely minimal, nevertheless it has higher readability of function than Beirut’s extra overblown data. That is an intimate, unflinching album that pulls its energy from Condon’s voice, which is continuously multi-tracked into big choirs, like a lonely man who has invited his imaginary associates to a celebration.
It stays completely cathartic to listen to Condon in full canorous flight, pushing easy vocal traces to grandiose conclusions. Drum machine apart, “So Many Plans” is a basic, horn-heavy Beirut heartbreaker within the type of “Elephant Gun.” “The Tern,” in the meantime, is a grasp class in pared-down songwriting, driving one melodic thought to towering emotional extremes. Condon went to Norway and got here again with a well-recognized tangle of contradictions: Hadsel is a brand new starting for Beirut that seems like previous occasions, a file born of despair and solitude that also feels lively.
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