Friday night I finally got to my first Mountain Goats show. It was an amazing experience. My friend Mountain Goats front man John Darnielle has become my favorite song writer by a long measure, but seeing what he does with his songs live secured that place even firmer. I emphasize seeing, because John embodies his [...]

“…the physical nature of faith is audible: how, if you ever get even a taste of it, you feel it in your bones. And in your extremities, and in your senses, and in your reflexes. Religious music that doesn’t convey this aspect of faith isn’t necessarily a failure; I’m not about to condemn Gregorian chant [...]

I’m blogging through the series of videos made to accompany the album Flying Club Cup by Beirut (aka Zach Condon and band). Song #6 is The Penalty. Here’s the video:

These Flying Club Cup videos have been a journey through a mythic Brooklyn, Brooklyn as a musical landscape in Zach’s mind, where he (and perhaps he [...]

“Sometimes following John [Darnielle - lead singer of the Mountain Goats] is like…I mean, we’re in the South…sometimes following John is a little like following Jesus. It’s very difficult, sometimes rewarding, and sometimes you wake up and you go, ‘Why the hell am I at a snake handling church?’”
- stage patter from Perry Wright from [...]

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.

 
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”

 
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.”

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.

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 [...]

Beirut (Creator/songwriter Zach Condon & band) is a marvelous fusion of indie/pop sensibilities with European folk traditions. Condon’s first album, 2006’s Gulag Orkestar, was heavily influence by Balkan and gypsy traditions. I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for Eastern European folk music even since I spent a summer in Hungary. Condon and [...]

From Asthmatic Kitty (the record label of Sufjan Stevens):
The hard working souls at Stereogum managed to wrangle the following little video gem from the depths of YouTube. If you don’t smile by the time one of the students pretends to bite into a candy cane, please say hello for us to the three apparitions of [...]