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Credits

Release Date: May 09, 2006; Lead Performance: Beirut; Genre: Indie Rock

How can this dense slice of exotic musical bohemia spring from the mind of a 19-year-old kid from New Mexico? Beirut's Zach Condon's startlingly accomplished debut album, Gulag Orkestar is far more redolent of 1920s Bucharest than modern-day Albuquerque, with its mournful accordion, funereally paced percussion, and ululating vocals; Condon's voice swoops and warbles like a Gypsy-caravan Morrissey, as if the young lad were actually standing in the wood-smoke air and cobblestone streets of the faraway and long-ago cities he sings of. B+


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Posted May 26, 2006

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