It's amazing how I didn't hurt myself by jumping on the Beirut bandwagon tonight at Joe's Pub. As I was saying today, "I'm seeing the other band the blog community is fawning over." While I don't feel its my duty to see every band my fellow people are raving about, I turn to the music to see if it peaks my interest. What I found interesting about Beirut is the hodgepodge of European music styles and instrumentation clashing together. It's World Music for the indie kids.
Even though Beirut were the openers tonight for The Wiyos, I'll start with them. The band fronted by wunderkind Zach Condon put on a wildly entertaining and full-sounding set. Featuring seven members who trade between horns, clarinet, ukulele, organs, cello, accordion and mandolin, the band are barely a year into its existence and they have a sound that sets itself apart from the main stream.
With anything with an accordion, you tend to think of sea-faring tunes. When you hear the various muted horns, tambourines and bass drums, you can think of gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians and the like. The ukulele and mandolins make you think of old time mountain folk music. Then you have Condon's voice, I first heard "Postcards from Italy" a while back and said, "Stephen Merritt." Listening to "Scenic World," you might mistake it for the 70th lost track off 69 Love Songs. I just read the band's bio and it names checks Merritt.
While I'm hearing their debut album Gulag Orkestar for the first time as I write this ($10 at the show, yee haw), it hasn't dawned on me yet why all these elements work. I have a feeling it might be just be the musicianship. I did read that Condon's debut at Knitting Factory was lackluster. Tonight being his third area show ever, I wouldn't have known that he's only a month into his live career. There were no signs of jitters. Everything flowed together nicely and effortlessly.
He's starting to work on his stage banter. Tonight, he asked a person sitting upfront if he can have some of their food. He later said, "They didn't feed us back stage." Joe's Pub is strange in that you have people eating dinner while the band is performing. Someone later passed up a salad which was passed around the band. You know Condon is in his freshman stage of existence when he neglected to tell the crowd that they would perform their last song. He started to pack up and realized his snafu. "Umm, you can go ahead and talk now. We're done." He's learning.
Beirut being a different breed of buzz band, it will interesting to see where this newfound attention will bring them. You're not going to dance around like a maniac like an Arctic Monkeys show or raise your fist and yell "RAWK!" when you hear Beirut. I think once Condon's got more shows under his belt, him and the band will be a positive creative force in the music landscape.
Local boys The Wiyos keep alive a great American tradition of old time country/blues from the depression era. They wouldn't be out-of-place in O Brother, Where Are Thou? or a vaudeville show. I'm glad bands like these are around to keep the music in our conscience. We tend to forget that their was a vital music scene before Elvis came along that's not to far off from pop music.
What's neat are the array of old type instruments they incorporate into their set. The lead singer brings out a washboard adorned will all sorts of bells, whistles and contraptions that are all used in their music. All he needed was symbols around his ankles. The songs have a catchy bounce that's easy to get into. So once in a while it's good to hear this style of music.
So tisk tisk to the groups of people who left after Beirut. You might as well get your money's worth and see the main act.
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