Rewriteable Content: Concert Pirates: Beirut @ Koko 6/26/07

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Concert Pirates: Beirut @ Koko 6/26/07

We fine travelers here at the Content have lifted wings and sailed seas to bring you the latest installment of Concert Pirates with our beloved banshee blowers, Beirut. It was at London’s historic Koko Theater that Beirut followed up its Glastonbury appearance with a set peppered with tracks from their two releases as well as highlights ("The Penalty", "Nantes") from their forthcoming long player, the Flying Club Cup, due October 9th.

Zach Condon’s usual wizardry of voice and presence played out in customary Beirut style with songs filled out and overturned with heavy-footed drums and quadruple fisted horn blowing. Being in such foreign vicinity, surrounded with accents ranging from marked eastern European gutturals, high nosed French patois, and burly oh-d Irish dialect, Koko seemed more a cross section of some world that Condon describes than a hipster chic venue for the indie affectioneers. His descriptions are more Paris than Moscow. His dance step contortions more child than man. In this live setting, his voice drifted even more between cabaret and street corner busker than our in ear perceptions of his recordings would make us believe, and we really did believe. It is almost as if Beirut was soundtracking some fictional tragedy typified by an Edith Piaf-like history. Condon sang the story and the night was ours along the Rhine, in that buried brick bar beneath British walkabouts, and hoping that somehow our transport would never fail to arrive and take us from this scenic world.