Beirut shares new song ‘The Tern’
Zach Condon, better known under his musical alias Beirut, has released a new song, ‘The Tern’.
The newest single from Condon’s upcoming album Hadsel, ‘The Tern’ is the same brand of gentle folk-rock that the songwriter has been reliably churning out for the past decade and change. Backed with a sparse drum machine arrangement, Condon chants simple aphorisms that can be transcendent or charming in their stripped-back form.
“The base of this song comes from an old Roland synthesizer and drum machine part which I had lying around from a previous Berlin session,” Condon explains in a statement. “The lyrics I improvised on the spot and finished the song off by adding layers of church organs and hand percussion.”
“I stacked the parts high despite always being afraid of overdoing it,” he added. “In the end, I was confused how I had written such a seemingly positive and even hopeful song, but once I took a closer look at the lyrics, I saw the real nature of the hidden defeat and triumph of caution rather than of hope.”
Hadsel came to fruition after Condon absconded to the Norwegian island of the same name following the release of 2019’s Gallipoli. There, the calmness and tranquillity of the setting helped inform the new music that Condon was crafting. As he recovered from a bout of laryngitis, Condon began work on what would become Hadsel.
“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 explained. “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.”
“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,” he also said. “I’d like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music.”
Check out ‘The Tern’ down below. Hadsel is set for a November 10th release.
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