BEIRUT/REALPEOPLE > March of the Zapotec/Holland

Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar saw Zach Condon marching through Eastern Europe with horn-heavy gypsy folk, while ‘07’s follow-up The Flying Club Cup traipsed across French beaches. His latest foray, March of the Zapotec/Holland-a split disc with his former Realpeople moniker-Condon stays a little closer to his Albuquerque, N.M. home by merely stepping over the border into Mexico for some true-blood mariachi with the 19-piece Jimenez Band. For covering such vast regional flavors, Zapotec largely follows suit with Beirut’s signature warbly crooning, brass swagger and jangled strings as before.Label: BA DA BING!
[Rating: 3.5 stars]

Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar saw Zach Condon marching through Eastern Europe with horn-heavy gypsy folk, while ‘07’s follow-up The Flying Club Cup traipsed across French beaches. His latest foray, March of the Zapotec/Holland-a split disc with his former Realpeople moniker-Condon stays a little closer to his Albuquerque, N.M. home by merely stepping over the border into Mexico for some true-blood mariachi with the 19-piece Jimenez Band. For covering such vast regional flavors, Zapotec largely follows suit with Beirut’s signature warbly crooning, brass swagger and jangled strings as before. It’s in Holland that Condon truly reveals his unforeseen roots as a synth-pop revivalist, breaking out drum machines, vocoder stylings and keyboard tweaks. Remarkably, Condon succeeds in both veins, however dissimilar they may be, lending fans a small taste of his early home recordings and, perhaps, hinting of more to come.