In 2023,
Zach Condon
released the solo
Beirut
album
Hadsel
, a set of songs recorded during periods of self-imposed (for health issues), then forced (due to COVID-19) isolation and featuring a limited palette centered on a church organ. He returns less than two years later to a more wide-ranging chamber folk sound for
A Study of Losses
. That not to say it's a "typical"
album: Inspired by the tale of a man obsessed with archiving humankind's lost thoughts and creations,
consists of 11 songs and seven instrumentals commissioned by Kompani Giraff, a Swedish circus, for their stage show of the same name (loosely based on the 2018 novel Verzeichnis einiger Verluste by Judith Schalansky). Having said that, both the songs and the instrumentals here function much more like a
album than, say, a score. Appropriately melancholy in nature, the album begins with the mournful "Disappearances and Losses," an otherworldly instrumental whose slowly unfolding melody of pulsing tones blends unison electronic and acoustic instruments. The first song, "Forest Encyclopedia," is livelier, with earthy percussion and layers of ukulele-type strumming and vocal harmonies alongside lyrics about leaving and hiding. The plucked and malleted, lullaby-like "Villa Sacchetti" offers
Condon
at his most bittersweet, and the breezier "Guericke's Unicorn" incorporates drum kit and modular synths for something more resplendent. The record's persistently fantastical, yearning qualities are also reflected in lyrics like the repeated "Where did you go?/Where have you been?" from "Tuanaki Atoll," a song about an island in the South Pacific that disappeared circa 1842. Elsewhere, Baroque influences are most evident on the instrumental "Mare Crisium." As a whole, only one of the 18 tracks here crosses the four-minute mark, so
' hour-long playing time seems to go by quickly, and its unceasing sweetness and longing linger after
is "Left to be/A sea of tranquility" ("Mare Tranquillitatis") to close a lovely theater project. ~ Marcy Donelson