crawling out of a music rut…

29Mar08

it’s funny how music hits you in waves. at one moment you’ll be totally enraptured by a given band or song — and these usually lead you to discover a slew of other bands/songs that get you going — but eventually, one of two things happen to send you hurtling head-first into a rut:

1. you get overwhelmed by all your new discoveries and end up hearing music, but not really listening to it…
2. you get bored with your latest obsession(s) because you’ve had it/them on repeat for weeks.

this is the music slump. and this is where i’ve been for the past month or so.

more or less everything that i listen to either bores me or annoys me… at best, a new tune will hold my interest for a few days. it sucks! it can sometimes be really hard to heave yourself out of a music rut. but! i spy a light at the end of the tunnel…

spring cleaning my iTunes library (OMFG NERD) led me to rediscover Beirut, an eclectic band headed by an even more eclectic frontman by the name of Zach Condon.

back in 2006, i had been heavily into their Gulag Orkestar album (click here for my dailytube review of Beirut’s video for Postcards from Italy). and now i’ve sort of fallen in love with them all over again!

so i’ve gone and got my sweaty palms on a copy of their second (latest) album, The Flying Club Cup. this probably ranks as one of the best decisions i’ve made this month—right up there alongside spring cleaning my iTunes library in the first place.

The Flying Club Cup has been described as Condon’s “love letter to France” (each song on the album is intended to evoke a different French city)—i couldn’t have dreamt up a more beautiful nor a cleverer follow-up to Beirut’s eastern european gypsy music-inspired Gulag Orkestar.

some favourite tracks from the new album include Nantes, Guyamas Sonora, and St. Apollonia.

thank you, Beirut! thank you.

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