Day 14, Beirut - Gulag Orkestar

I was happy to mix things up today with Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar. It was great to get some “world” music into this project, even though this album was recorded by an American grad student in a New Mexico University dorm room. Songwriter Zach Condon writes Balkan/Eastern European influenced music. The songs are very simple and very catchy. They repeat two—maybe four if you’re lucky—chords over and over again while the singer and trumpets trade verses. The songs stand on their own quite well, so if you put “Postcards from Italy,” or “Gulag Orkestar” on, your friends will not only be mighty impressed, but enjoy themselves. But a whole album of two or four chord oscillations is a little redundant, and leaves me waiting for a “real” song. But it never comes. Although I am a little disappointed that there are not any huge movements within each song, thinking back, a more complex song structure would blow the whole vibe of the album, and probably ruin the Balkan authenticity.

The best thing about this album are the trumpets—especially the harmonization. Their melodies take center stage here-even over the vocals-mostly because they are so extravagant. He gets up to five part harmony at one point! They are really well blended, probably because they are played by the same guy, but the sound is still really raw. It sounds like you bumped into this band on the streets of some random Baltic city…or Santa Fe.

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