Prefixblog.com: NY Mag: Beirut 'The Band'

August 09, 2006

NY Mag: Beirut 'The Band'

Good feature/interview on Beirut over at New York Magazine. Here are a few excerpts:

“I think I share music with a very specific group of people,” he says. “I play for those who want to hear something energetic and true and beautiful in music again. But perhaps people just like that I am 20 and fresh-faced. Maybe if I had a beard, they would have been harder on me. ”

He likes Brooklyn—it’s “as close as we are going to get to Europe in America.” But he’s deeply “wary of the whole New York indie-rock scene. It all seems like style over substance. Gogol Bordello is a Balkan punk beat-box band—I don’t want to be a part of that. Half of what makes that band work is the fact that the singer dresses crazy.”

Late last month, Beirut opened for the Swedish sensation (you’ll have to trust us on this) Jens Lekman at the Bowery Ballroom. Something had changed in Condon. The show was rowdy but controlled. He’d stopped reading the blogs—though he still seemed to know what they’d been saying about him. “Here’s a song that you all have been asking us to play,” he said, grinning, before he launched into “Scenic World,” an electronic bedroom-pop song. “It might have taken us a while, but you know, we figured it out.” The crowd laughed. [New York Magazine]

Aug 9, 2006 1:17:06 PM | Beirut