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Beirut, the nom de plume of indie-folk singer-songwriter Zach Condon, travels to remote Norway and returns with Hadsel, his first new album in four years.
The LP, due out Nov. 10 via Beirut’s own Pompeii Records, was inspired by Condon’s sojourn to the titular Norwegian island where he escaped to after persistent throat issues forced him to cancel his 2019 tour. Ensconced in a Hadsel cabin and given access to a nearby church organ, Condon went to work on what would become his first LP since 2019’s Gallipoli.
“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,”Condon said in a statement.
“It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonizing many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me. The few hours of light would expose the unfathomable beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and the hours-long twilights would fill me with subdued excitement. I’d like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music.”
Ahead of Hadsel’s release, Condon has shared the album’s first single “So Many Plans,” along with a visualizer that captures the track’s icy Arctic vibes:
“I liked that this song struck a balance between the feelings of acceptance, hope and giving up,” Condon added. “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 is available to preorder now.
Hadsel Track List
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”
