Beirut – Royal Festival Hall Foyer, 25th June 2007

On a day when an instruction to meet at the ‘water feature’ at Festival Hall was quite a vague instruction, a few hundred of what seemed like London’s young, trendy and beautiful, plus me, gathered to relive the Glastonbury experience in more ways than one on the South Bank of the Thames last night. Beirut were generously giving up their day off to perform a free show in-between said Glastonbury appearance and a night at Camden’s Koko. I had somehow labelled Zach Condon “too clever by half” (Sufjan Stevens still suffers that fate for me) in a sweeping act of prejudice born from an aversion to one man in his bedroom albums, a cursory rush through the Amazon samples from Gulag Orkestar, and some snotty one-upmanship based on my own experiences of travel in pre-fall of the Iron Curtain Eastern Europe – Zach’s own drop-out odessey having actually taken him no further east than Prague. So, I had BBC Interactive to thank for a view of the weekend’s performance – and was impressed enough to give him a second chance. Plus, of course, it was free.

In what was essentially a coffee bar in a well lit concrete bunker (don’t you just love 50′s architecture), Beirut dished out a spellbinding hour of performance. With a PA system literally held together with sticky tape, band members often made up for a lack of amplification by simply taking off into the audience to play. It was a delightfully ramshackle event with a set list improvised on the spot that left one giddy with the spontaneity and creative force of it all. Instruments were switched with abandon, ukuleles flailed to within an inch of their lives, and lusty, blaring trumpets echoed out across the Thames (no PA necessary there). The sun even decided to grace us with a visit – Wroclaw Sunset? (see what I did there). With the lonely bedroom left far behind, fleshed out by a real band the expected selection from Gulag Orkestar and Lon Gisland came alive – the spirit of Baba Yaga was amongst us. Zach Condon was conducting and gyrating with abandon – if ever you need to organise a shuffling piss up at a Yiddish brewery, he’s your man. I wonder what the sprinkling of Eastern European waitresses working the Festival Hall bars made of the evening? At least a couple of new songs were aired, plus some traditional ‘covers’. With the configuration of the band on show before us the new songs sounded like more of the same (though who’s complaining), but Condon promised that at least one was nothing like the version on forthcoming album The Flying Club Cup – expected in September. For a man for whom even the description eclectic seems restricting, anything is possible.

In another notable entry in my rock’n’urinal moments (the greatest still being a slash at Abbey Road studios), I had the pleasure of a wazz beside drummer Nicholas Petree after the show. And let me tell you lucky ladies, you won’t be disappointed. No wonder he always grinning from behind the drumkit. Other than him, I’m having trouble matching names to faces in the shifting live Beirut roster, which is a shame as each member of the band gave a vigorous performance that deserves a mention in dispatches. Too clever by half? Nope, the man child Condon is a genius. How could I have doubted anyone who is a Jacques Brel AND Jonathan Richman fan? All of which makes me the idiot. Right, I’m off to find some sackcloth and ashes, and I’d be wearing that clobber in penitance at Koko on Tuesday night if it wasn’t already sold out. I hope the Camden show ponies are up for it.

Oh, and just because I’ll probably never get the chance to mention this again here, if you want more Balkan strangeness – check out Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares Vol.1 – the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir. Go on, Zach would want you to. The song from the 3 minute 15 mark is just remarkable, and was also one of Emmylou Harris’s desert island discs. The less said about their third song on that clip the better though, but I’m not sure I’ve got the guts to say it to their faces.

Links
Beirut – Postcards From Italy [download mp3 ♫]
Beirut [official site] [myspace]