Beirut

Gulag Orkestar drops you in Eastern Europe with a young high school dropout from New Mexico as your tour guide. Zach Condon, just 20 upon this debut release, is the prodigy behind Beirut: he sings with a Rufus Wainwright drawl and plays multiple instruments (saxophone, clarinet, mandolin, accordion, etc.). His song titles suggest a German influence, but the music within is steeped in traditional Balkan folk and the mariachi of the American Southwest. The gypsy spirit and romanticism is all framed by tightly structured indie pop that bursts with wonder, wistfulness and wanderlust.

Play Boban Markovic or Kocani Orkestar and you hear contained chaos and wild drums. Play Beirut, most of it multitracked by young Zach Condon working alone, and you hear irrepressible melodicism tempered by harmonic melancholy. Rather than a watering down, this mildness is a détournement, the personal stamp of a romantic caught twixt Keats and Ossian--half prodigy, half bullsh*t artist. He might even bring off the Buckley-Wainwright-Yorke vocalisms if he minded his words instead of melismating croons and moans. But only twice does Condon's mumble venture into the light: "What can you do when curtain falls/What will you do when curtain falls/You're left right, left right, left right, left right, left right, left right, left right, left right" (the Balkans, f*cked coming and going) and "The times we had/Oh, when the wind would blow and rain would snow/Were not all bad/We put our feet just where they had to go" (the sorrows of young Zachary). (Grade: B+)