I’m blogging through the series of videos made to accompany the album Flying Club Cup by Beirut (aka Zach Condon and band). Song #5 is Cliquot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV6jygKNCM

 
I think this may be my favorite song on the album. There is both resignation and hope. We lose people we deeply love, but life continues.

A plague in the [...]

Here is the video from the fourth song on Flying Club Cup by Beirut (Zach Condon and band). The song is “La Banlieue”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bonzZowYre0

 
La banlieue (literally “the outskirts”) is the French term for an area of low income housing around the edge of a city. It’s the hood.
The song is one of two instrumentals on the [...]

I’m currently blogging day by day through the set of videos for Zach Condon’s (aka Beirut) magical album The Flying Club Cup. Today’s song is “Guyamas Sonora.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukU-E5Qp4Kg

I think it was this song that made me start thinking about another side to Zach’s exploration of French chanson on this album. While much of the album is [...]

Here is the video for “Sunday Smile,” the second song off Beirut’s new album Flying Club Cup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4qXMzpH-Y

This one is set in the courtyard of a Brooklyn apartment building. The first thing I like in this live arrangement is the subbing of twin ukuleles for the oom-pah synthesizers on the album version, a simpler and appropriately [...]

Now it can be told…
Christian folk-rock band Caedmon’s Call announced today that former member Derek Webb has rejoined the band for its upcoming album Overdressed (due out in August). Webb will tour with the band as well in promotion for that tour.
You can pre-order Overdressed at www.caedmonscall.com on June 15 and get two extra tracks. [...]

 
…watch this blog on May 17. Stunning announcement to follow! Film at eleven! Your mileage may vary! Offer not good where taxed or regulated!

From Backstage with Caedmon’s Call

The Foolish Sage backstage with Caedmon’s last fall. I was negotiating with Cliff to play cowbell on the next album.

My dear friend singer/songwriter Jeremy Casella has just announced a May 22, 2007, release date for Recovery, his new studio album. Jeremy says he’s been “mining for truth and beauty” in his music, and in this new project it sounds like he has sought that integration both lyrically and musically. Stepping on from his folky-acoustic [...]

After any exam period, I usually like to take what I call a blow-off night, a night totally free from any seminary-related activities or studies. Even though I only had one midterm exam this semester, I decided why waste the tradition? So tonight my daughter Hannah and I finally went to see Amazing Grace.
A comedy [...]

I’ve been told that people appreciate blogs that are “honest” and “authentic,” where the blogger pours out his/her heart in full confession.
OK, I’m ready.
(Takes deep breath; looks to accountability group leader for reassuring nod)
I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan lately….and I don’t have a clue what in the world he’s talking about most of the [...]

From time to time my friends and I engage in genial debate over what constitutes “Christian” art…or whether there can even be such a thing. At the extremes of views on what Christian art looks like would be, on one end, the kind of kitschy paintings and figurines one sees in a typical Christian book [...]