Where in the world is Zach Condon? Though he is from New Mexico, his band is named after a city in Lebanon. His releases for Ba Da Bing Records are trips of different kinds within themselves. He took us from the Balkan Gulag Orkestar to Lon Gisland, and now he gives us a one way ticket to France to experience the Flying Club Cup. Think of him as a modern day Phileas Fogg taking all of us Passepartouts around the world on an all expenses paid trip of a lifetime.

Not only does he take us to France but he winds the clock back, and ups the charm ante by going back to the times when women wore flappers, like the one on the album cover, an example of the actual pictures that served as the album’s inspiration. Condon offers us to join this time and place and enter into The Flying Club Cup, a traditional balloon cup soaring over France. Condon gives us the captivating view over the rim of the basket, under the striped and colorful hot-air bulb and blue sky, to the French landscape below.

We travel through lush, rolling green countrysides with rocky creeks flowing, and cobblestone farmhouses with faded rust-red barns dotting the hills. The kinds of places that swoon like strings and accordions. We travel over smooth toned keys like quaint villages such as “Cherbourg,” with its street shops with splitting painted wood signs ushering in street walkers, and cathedrals pointing to the sky with bells ringing miles into the distance. We can see men dressed in pinstripes, women with blush and cherry lipstick in fur coats carelessly and elegantly smoking long-necked cigarettes. A radio crackles from the shop window they are leaning against, a Parisian soap opera love scene with horns bleeding in the background. Postcards all of them, caught in glimpses set to music that always does them justice.

The only disappointment comes when we land at “St. Appolonia.” To know we will have to wait until next year to experience such beauty again. But with Condon’s soundtrack, and the repeat button handy, rustic and charming France is now always at our fingertips. The Flying Club Cup expands the world Condon is creating for us and may even be a more desirable trip than his first two releases. As with Gulag and Lon Gisland, Condon doesn’t so much describe the places and the people that find their way into his music, but his music becomes that place itself. All you have to do with The Flying Club Cup is close your eyes, pour yourself a glass of the finest French red wine, and feel the wind and culture come rushing through.

Beirut Official Site
Ba Da Bing Records