Beirut’s Zach Condon is a full grown man

Beirut started small. Sante Fe, New Mexico’s Zach Condon launched the project from his teenage bedroom, crafting a lush, romantic fusion of indie pop and Balkan folk. Over six years, the project swelled to a sextet and released four widely loved albums, earning them a place on the radar. The Rip Tide is the band’s latest, Condon’s most adult creation to date.


Zach Condon. Photo by Kristianna Smith
 
Beirut started small. Sante Fe, New Mexico’s Zach Condon launched the project from his teenage bedroom, crafting a lush, romantic fusion of indie pop and Balkan folk. Over six years, the project swelled to a sextet and released four widely loved albums, earning them a place on the radar. The Rip Tide is the band’s latest, Condon’s most adult creation to date.

“It’s weird when you come to the realization that you’re no longer a teenager,” he says. “I entered the business pretty young. I was 19 when my first record was released and I went on the road around the world, dropped high school, college and everything, to do what I always wanted to do. But I realized that it left me in arrested development, so to speak, in some aspects of my life, so I had to do some growing up.” His friends used to joke that every birthday was his 19th, but at 26, he’s married and owns a house in Brooklyn. New York is where The Rip Tide was recorded — a first for Condon, who used to routinely haul his trumpet and ukulele back to New Mexico to make records.

“I was trying to establish what was changed in my life — that, in a way, this was my new home,” he says. And that wasn’t the only change in his method: The Rip Tide was more of a group effort than any of Beirut’s previous albums, one that was self-released in order to avoid deadlines and other outside pressures.

Condon decided not to “hide behind music,” a habit he developed due to the relative ease of composition. Lyrics have always been a greater challenge for the songwriter (words are “awkward and treacherous,” he says), so it was essential to be bold.

Equally awkward for Condon is the day-to-day stress of his nomadic lifestyle, at once isolating and overwhelmingly social. “Now that I know it, it’s okay, but I don’t think anyone in their right mind can get used to touring. It’s a scary thing, going from your bedroom to the world stage,” he says. ■
 
Beirut plays with Little Scream at Metropolis tonight, Monday, July 16 and Tuesday, July 17, 8 p.m., $40

Leave a Reply