Beirut Announce New Album 'Hadsel' For November, Share Lead Single So Many Plans
Wednesday, 30 August 2023
Written by Jon Stickler
Photo: Lina Gaißer
Zach Condon has announced a new album from Beirut.
The follow-up to 2019's 'Gallipoli' is called 'Hadsel' and will arrive on November 10 via Condon's label, Pompeii Records.
The record is named after the remote island in northern Norway, where Condon wrote material for the album in 2020. During his time there, he met a "fellow organ enthusiast" named Oddvar who gave him the opportunity to explore the local Hadselkirke, an early 19th century octagonal wooden structure which contained a church organ, providing the foundation of the record. The musician said:
"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. It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonising many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me."
As a preview, Conon has shared the record's first single, So Many Plans, which leads with a ukulele and a flourishing horn section. He added:
"I liked that this song struck a balance between the feelings of acceptance, hope and giving up. 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."
'Hadsel' tracklist:
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-Studio
11. The Tern
12. Regulatory
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