Beirut @ Berlin Tempodrom

2024 82 min

A joyous return to the stage for Zach Condon and his European folk-focussed indie project Beirut. This is music as imagined landscape, a romantic sweep of Europe's past through the eyes of an American troubadour. From his Balkan-tinged debut in 2006, through a bohemian France dreamed up on 2007's The Flying Cup Club and on towards the Dutch and Mexican influences of his later material, Beirut is clearly the work of a singular vision while remaining hauntingly familiar, a half-remembered dream of a past life. Latest album Hadsel was inspired by a short time spent exiled in northern Norway, an emotional return to form released in 2023.