The Flying Club Cup

The Flying Club Cup
Studio album by Beirut
Released October 9, 2007
Genre Balkan folk
Length 38:35
Label Ba Da Bing!, 4AD
Beirut chronology
Elephant Gun EP
(2007)		 The Flying Club Cup
(2007)		 March of the Zapotec/Holland EP
(2009)
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic [1]
Billboard (favorable) [2]
Filter (91%) [3]
Pitchfork Media (8.0/10) [4]
Q [5]
Rockfeedback [6]
Robert Christgau [7]
Stylus (A-) [8]
Virgin Media [9]

The Flying Club Cup is the second studio album by Balkan folk band Beirut, released on October 9, 2007 on 4AD Records. The album was pre-released on iTunes on September 4, 2007.

The album features string arrangements by Arcade Fire contributor Owen Pallett, better known by his former stage name Final Fantasy.[10]

Contents

Background

Condon on the name and inspiration for the album:

“ Back in the early 1900s...there used to be this hot air balloon festival in Paris—[the album's] titled after that and after this very bizarre 1910 photo I found [by Léon Gimpel]. It's one of the first color photos ever made, at the World's Fair, and it...shows all these ancient hot air balloons about to take off in the middle of Paris. I just thought it was the most surreal image I'd seen in a long time. ”

Condon on the sound of the album:

“ I was listening to a lot of Jacques Brel and French chanson music—pop songs shrouded in big, glorious, over-the-top arrangements and all this drama—and that was in some sense unfamiliar territory to me. So I started buying new instruments and relying on things I wasn't necessarily comfortable with, like French horns and euphoniums, carrying these big, epic big brass parts that I used to do all on trumpets, and working with accordion and organ instead of all ukulele—very much throwing myself in the world of classical pop music, I guess you could say. ”

According to the program notes given out during Beirut's performance at The Society for Ethical Culture in New York on September 24, 2007, each song on the album is intended to evoke a different French city (although Guaymas, Sonora is a Mexican city).

Track listing

All songs written by Zach Condon, except where noted.

  1. "A Call to Arms" - 0:18
  2. "Nantes" - 3:50
  3. "A Sunday Smile" - 3:35
  4. "Guyamas Sonora" - 3:31
  5. "La Banlieue" - 1:57
  6. "Cliquot" (Zach Condon, Owen Pallett) - 3:51
  7. "The Penalty" - 2:22
  8. "Forks and Knives (La Fête)" - 3:33
  9. "In the Mausoleum" - 3:10
  10. "Un Dernier Verre (Pour la Route)" (Zach Condon, Kendrick Strauch) - 2:51
  11. "Cherbourg" - 3:33
  12. "St. Apollonia" - 2:58
  13. "The Flying Club Cup" - 3:05

Videos

The whole album has been shot by La Blogothèque in Brooklyn. Each track filmed as a Take Away Show, available on the site of the album, flyingclubcup.com

Personnel

References

  1. ^ Allmusic review
  2. ^ Billboard review
  3. ^ Filter review
  4. ^ Pitchfork review
  5. ^ (November 2007, p.142)
  6. ^ Rockfeedback review
  7. ^ Robert Christgau review
  8. ^ Stylus review
  9. ^ Virgin Media review
  10. ^ Pitchfork: Beirut's Condon Talks New LP, Obsession, Exhaustion
Beirut
Albums
Gulag Orkestar  · The Flying Club Cup  · The Rip Tide
EPs