Zach Condon is resurrecting his acclaimed indie outfit Beirut four years after the release of their last album. Hadsel, due out on November 10, is named after the Norweigan island the multi-instrumentalist called home during the early months of 2020.
Videos by American Songwriter
The 12-track LP serves as a solo project, swapping out the group’s rotating cast of musicians and vocalists for a project firmly focused on Condon and his experiences. This new batch of songs finds the experimental singer/songwriter reflecting on the persistent health issues that almost caused Condon to step away from performing permanently.
After scrapping Beirut’s 2019 tour dates due to throat issues, Condon retreated to Norway, where he embraced solitude and leaned into the history and culture of the area.
“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,” Condon says in a statement. “It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonizing [over] many things past and present while the beauty of 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.”
Condon is introducing Hadsel with the lead single “So Many Plans,” a sweeping, dreamy mix of acoustic instrumentation and electronically modified sounds.
[RELATED: From Beirut to Berlin: 6 Bands Named After Places They Aren’t From]
“I liked that this song struck a balance between the feelings of acceptance, hope, and giving up,” he adds. “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.”
Listen to Beirut’s new single “So Many Plans” below.
Hadsel Track List:
1. “Hadsel”
2. “Arctic Forest”
3. “Baion”
4. “So Many Plans”
5. “Melbu”
6. “Stokmarknes”
7. “Island Life”
8. “Spillhaugen”
9. “January 18th”
10. “Süddeutsches Ton-Bild-StudioThe Tern”
11. “Regulatory”
(Photo by Lina Gaißer, Courtesy of Shore Fire Media)
