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Oct 11, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Lina Gaißer

Beirut (aka Zach Condon and his band) is releasing a new album, Hadsel, on November 10 via Condon’s own Pompeii label. Now he shared its second single, “The Tern,” and announced his only shows in support of the album. Beirut will be performing two shows at Berlin’s Tempodrom on February 16 and 17, which will be his first concerts in four years. Condon is currently based in Berlin. Listen to “The Tern” below.

Condon had this to say about the song in a press release: “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. The lyrics I improvized 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. 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.”

Previously Beirut shared Hadsel’s first single, “So Many Plans.”

Hadsel is the follow-up to 2019’s Gallipoli and the 2022 compilation album, Artifacts.

After cutting his Gallipoli tour short due to throat issues, in 2020 Condon traveled to Hadsel, an island off the coast of Norway, with the goal of finding a place to create where the sun barely rises. Once there he worked in a Hadselkirke, a wooden, octagonal structure that dates back to the early 1800s and features a church organ.

“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,” said Condon in a previous press release. “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.”

Read our 2007 cover story interview with Beirut.

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