Artifacts highlights both Condon’s maximalist, full-sounding folk side and his scaled-back electronic side, making it a great introduction to Beirut.
Just two weeks after Broken Social Scene released Old Dead Young: B-Sides & Rarities, Beirut released Artifacts, a collection of 26 B-sides, EP tracks, previously unreleased songs, and more. Truly, the B-side compilation gods have blessed us, and I like to think last year’s article praising this format deserves the credit.
Although Broken Social Scene and Beirut both got their start (and received their peak critical acclaim) in the mid-2000s, their similarities end there. Even though both ended up with the umbrella non-genre label “indie,” Broken Social Scene was always a clear-cut rock band while Beirut drifted more towards…Balkan folk? Beirut’s singer, songwriter, and general architect Zach Condon comes off as a very worldly fellow, and his music noticeably embraces traditional European (and occasionally Mexican) sounds. At the same time, he’s also got a talent for relatively simple songs consisting of just him with a synthesizer. Artifacts highlights both Condon’s maximalist, full-sounding folk side and his scaled-back electronic side, making it a great introduction to Beirut.
If you’ve made it a habit to collect Beirut’s EPs over the years, as I have, about a third of Artifacts will be familiar to you. To start, the first five tracks on Artifacts are the five tracks that comprise Beirut’s early EP Lon Gisland. On one hand, this feels like a bit of a hose if you own this EP. On the other hand, it’s a great EP, and starts the album off with “Elephant Gun,” which is my favorite Beirut song of all time. This song is peak Beirut, showcasing Condon’s dexterity with two oft-overlooked instruments – ukulele and flugelhorn – to transport listeners to distant lands in bygone times. It’s so good that it also appears on a second EP (Elephant Gun), and lends its horn melody to the third track “The Long Island Sound.” Lon Gisland and now Artifacts also contain the pleasant instrumental track “My Family’s Role in the World Revolution,” the buoyant “Carousels,” and an alternate, less-electronic version of “Scenic World” from Beirut’s 2006 debut Gulag Orkestar.
The other EP tracks on Artifacts are almost as good as the opening salvo from Lon Gisland. “Transatlantique” from the Elephant Gun EP is a decent song that brings a lot of ukulele and even some mandolin to the mix. It’s similar enough to “Elephant Gun,” but doesn’t come close to surpassing it. “Fountains and Tramways” and “Napoleon on the Bellerophon” are both from the Pompeii EP, and are among Condon’s earliest recordings. The former blends a drum machine beat with piano and even some horns at its end, while the latter has some nice Francophone touches in its accordion. Both are impressive for how young Condon must have been when he made them, although his voice is even less comprehensible than usual on these early efforts, which is saying something. Sadly, no tracks from Beirut’s 2009 double EP March of the Zapotec/Realpeople: Holland made it to this compilation.
Moving past the EP tracks, the real draw of Artifacts is how many songs sound like nothing you would expect from Beirut. Tracks 8 – 13 were described as “the Misfits” in the album’s announcement, which is an appropriate description. “Poisoning Claude” is Beirut’s take on New Order, complete with Condon doing what sounds like his best Bernard Sumner impression. “Irrlichter” is just as electronic, taking the form of a really awesome synthesizer jam. Dialing things back into folk (or folktronica), “Autumn Tall Tales,” “Bercy,” and “Fyodor Dormant” all use copious drum machine and a synthesizer, but bring enough horns forward to immediately be recognizable as Beirut, or at least a remix of them. In a complete 180, “Your Sails” isn’t electronic at all, and is instead what could be a really lo-fi recording of an old sea shanty. Beirut showed off their electronic chops on the Holland EP, but it was nothing quite like this.
These unexpected delights aren’t even restricted to this “Misfits” section of Artifacts either. “O Leãozinho” is a cover of Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso, and Condon adds his own twist of a ukulele, some horns, and a stomping beat to what was originally just Veloso and an acoustic guitar. It’s also interesting to hear Condon sing in Portuguese, since almost all of his vocals have been in English, despite his music’s international character. “Sicily” was apparently an early recording, and its arpeggiating synthesizer melody made me think I was listening to Beach House for a few seconds. Similarly, the opening bars of “Le Phare du Cap Bon” could have been a Whitest Boy Alive outtake. The album’s instrumental closer “Babylon” is one of its shortest, but leaves a lasting impression since it could pass as a hip-hop backing track or even chillwave. You’ll get why all of these tracks were left off the studio albums, given their dissimilarity from anything on them, but will still be glad to have heard them.
When I wrote about Beirut’s fifth studio album Gallipoli in 2019, I found it hard to figure out where it fit within the band’s discography. As a compilation, Artifacts does not have this issue. What was supposed to be a reissue of the Lon Gisland EP with some added B-sides “quickly grew into an entire extra records-worth of music” according to Condon, and he wanted to include more. At 26 tracks, Artifacts is not a casual listen, but it is comprehensive, and really does showcase some of the best Beirut has to offer. This makes it one of those rare compilations that would be a great introduction to an artist, since it shows how multifaceted Beirut can be. At the same time, even established Beirut fans are sure to be amazed by some of the unexpected sounds here. The only con to this is that more conventional fare like “Fisher Island Sound,” is overshadowed by its more curious counterparts. If nothing else, Artifacts gave me an excuse to hear “Elephant Gun” that many more times, which is always welcome.
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