DIGEST 001: Beirut

I frequently forget, and sometimes actively try to forget, just how much I loved the band Beirut when I was in early high school. It’s not because I feel like their music has aged poorly, or that it would even be necessarily embarrassing to admit to liking them now, but rather it may be that now some years have passed I can see clearly just how much I formed an identity around their music, and how that identity still hasn’t left me.

I sometimes treat this as a shameful secret, but I still own a ukelele. If you were on the internet between 2010-2016, you know just how painfully pervasive ukelele videos were on YouTube, and yes mine was bought in that same time frame. Covers, originals, it didn’t really matter, as long as it was simple chords and easy rhythms to sing along to. Even back then I found these videos embarrassing, so it really is no small miracle that Zach Condon convinced me ukelele could be cool, and a worthwhile instrument to learn. They’ve been scrubbed from my social media now, but back in the day there were videos of me playing ukelele and singing along to Andrew Jackson Jihad songs on my Instagram. I miss the version of myself who was unafraid to post with that kind of pseudo-confidence.

This week I’ve been digging back into the trove of Beirut YouTube videos, and it has made me nostalgic for a lot of things. For being an unapologetically cringy high schooler, for the time when I only wanted to have an interest if it was niche, when twee was a word I used to describe my wardrobe, and when I could see Zach Condon and co perform live. He announced back in 2021 that touring might just be too much for him health-wise now, so who knows when or if we’ll have Beirut shows again. But at least the Internet can provide us a resplendent archive of shows past. Here are some of my favorites.

Beirut - The Penalty | A Take Away Show

The one that started it all for me. How can you resist the scruffy haircuts, the languidly spoken French, the absolutely idyllic French cafe, and just a delightfully odd performance that we’d only have called cool in 2007. I really hope this doesn’t count as a flash mob, or I’ll have to reconsider whether it’s still cool. Such a great introduction to the entire vibe of this group, and The Penalty a song that shows how succinct and simple their greatness could be.

The Elephant Gun Video

A banger and a classic. Everything you want from an early-aughts-indie video; people pretending to be drunkenly soliloquizing, dancers in positively twee animal costumes, inexplicable confetti, walking into the ocean, this truly has it all. This video should be preserved because it is such a relic of this specific cultural moment.

Soiree de Poche

Does it get any more romantic than this? A Parisian flat with an Eiffel Tower view filled with girls with side-swept bangs and heavy eyeliner, boys with quirky mustaches, and not a single cell phone in sight. Joking and not joking about that last part. This video makes me miss the kinda-shitty indie house and warehouse shows I went to as a teenager in LA, because never again will I attend a show and not be greeted by waves of blue screens. Even if the music wasn’t great, it felt like everyone was a bit more present.

Though I haven’t been listening to them much since exiting teen-age, it’s been really refreshing to look back at Beirut’s influence on my life as an adult. They certainly exacerbated my wanna-be-expat phase, including convincing me to learn some Portuguese and French, dress in various shades of beige and cut my hair into a French bob (which I’ve occasionally strayed from, but have largely kept for ~10 years), and probably most importantly opened my musical interests beyond the Western canon.

I’ll leave you with some shitty phone videos I took when I saw them live at the Fonda in Hollywood back in 2013. I lined up early to be front row, and I remember being so close that I studied the little owls embroidered all over the trumpet player’s pants. I think about those pants a lot, actually.

Thanks for kickin’ and stickin’ around!