Beirut will release new album ‘Hadsel’ on November 10th.
The project is spearheaded by songwriter Zach Condon, who has guided them through multiple ups and downs. The band’s ‘Gallipolli’ tour closed in 2019, but health issues led by Zach wondering if he’d ever be able to perform again.
Searching for solace, he happened upon the island of Hadsel, far up in the northern part of Norway in the middle of Vesterålen. Secluding himself away, he found a means to progress, both in terms of his life, and his creativity.
“During my time in Hadsel, I worked hard on the music, lost in a trance and stumbling blindly through my own mental collapse that I had been pushing aside since I was a teenager,” says Zach Condon. “I was left agonising many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me. The few hours of light would expose the unfathomable beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and the hours-long twilights would fill me with subdued excitement. I’d like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music.”
12 tracks of all-new music, it’s led by new song ‘So Many Plans’ – refined, folk-hewn work, it finds Beirut at their best, combining baroque instrumentation with a newfound directness.
Zach adds…
“I liked that this song struck a balance between the feelings of acceptance, hope and giving up. The lyric came from a covid-times lament that rolled effortlessly into a kind of short lullaby. The instruments were somewhat unusual for me at the time, having dusted off a baritone uke I never used before to join the album’s primary instruments of either pump or church organ and the modular synthesizer as percussion and bass.”
