Review Summary: In with the old and in with the new.
The Flying Club Cup is, as lead singer songwriter Zach Condon has said, a “love letter to France” – but not to the France of Daft Punk or Phoenix. It’s a living, nostalgic memory of an older place altogether. The instrumentation that Beirut utilizes through the record echoes old folk songs and street performers. Playful organs, some joyful horns, clattering percussion, a proud accordion, and a warm string section lay the groundwork underneath Condon’s softly warbling baritone. This ensemble waltzes, marches, and trills its way through the record’s thirteen masterfully-penned tracks, each one with a clear sense of direction and many with exciting twists and turns in the path.
Unlike so many LP’s, The Flying Club Cup truly does its songs justice. It’s richly recorded and tastefully produced – the full sound of each instrument is immaculately preserved here. The record’s ‘studio magic’ turns out to be the studio’s invisibility – the clean, unobtrusive mixing and mastering of the album truly grants it the feeling of a live performance rather than a recording. This allows the Flying Club Cup to function as breathing memory rather than one made stiff, framed, and sold in packaging.
A faithful recording of a well-written, European-inspired folk album could be enough to warrant a decent rating from any critic. But there’s something special about The Flying Club Cub that goes beyond surface value, something that transcends a passing cultural stamp of approval. In a sort of aligning of the Indie Folk stars, Beirut’s second LP is a rare combination of craftsmanship and emotional resonance.
Throughout the record, Condon’s lyrics mirror the nostalgic instrumentation he employs. The Flying Club Cup spends many of its lines summoning strong emotions from the past. This occurs in the very opening lyric, “It’s been a long time…since I’ve seen you smile” and continues until the last track, where Condon recalls the burial of his father before looking to the future.
However, the nostalgia escapes common pitfalls. The Flying Club Cub is never overwhelming or pretentious, but rather emotional and personal. Its lyrics provide glances into stories of lost love, death, and pleasant days gone by, but never are they developed into clear narratives – they’re simply impressions of people and places past, much like our actual memories. Forgotten bottles of wine, a Sunday smile, chiming bells that make time seem to move slower – the elements that inhabit the world of the Flying Club Cub straddle a line between magical romanticism and day-to-day experience. Like the storyteller brought to life in Forks and Knives, The Flying Club Cup grants us a number of clear images paired with emotions that range from fleeting to heavy – they are clear enough to avoid frustrating vagueness but open-ended enough to allow us fill them with stories of our own. Instead of being off-putting or sentimental, The Flying Club Cup’s brand of nostalgia is open and inviting.
Yet while The Flying Club Cup is in many ways an embodiment of reminiscence for a time gone by, it’s built in the form of the very modern Indie record. It’s approximately forty minutes long, divided into a dozen-some songs with variations on the verse-chorus structure, and the product of a b(r)and issued under a record label. It’s nostalgia for a past generation in a form that is intensely familiar to our own.
The Flying Club Cup essentially invites the modern listener to dive into emotional romanticization on friendly, familiar terms. It’s hugely accessible, wielding emotional weight without imposing restrictive or heavy handed messages on its listener. Its lyrics are evocative, personal, and yet relatable while its music is exquisitely composed, preformed, and produced. Zach Condon may have penned a letter to France, but the way in which he did so allows us to pick up the pen and re-write it our own way. And what exquisite materials has he given us to do so.
