Beirut’s Hadsel is a Majestic Lesson in Personal Reflection

In the winter of 2020, Zach Condon adjourned to a remote cabin on the island of Hadsel in the northern state of Vesterålen, Norway. Craving solitude, he’d just canceled an extensive Beirut tour and needed time to recover, both from mental health issues and a nagging throat ailment. Exploring nearby, Condon came across the beautiful Hadselkirke church and its pipe organ therein. He sat at the organ and began to play. Day by day, his keyboard experiments started to take shape. Condon brought a mobile studio with him to Norway, just in case, and started recording the ideas that were forming—both in the cabin and in the church.

Arriving back home in Berlin just as COVID was closing in, he played the tapes back and started adding more layers—trumpet riffs, synth melodies and flecks of South American Tropicália. However, as the time when he’d usually call in musician friends and collaborators to help build his experiments into a fully formed album arrived, Condon decided to plow on alone. He dug out an old baritone ukulele to complement the richness of both organs’ chords and compiled his own rhythms using hand drums, shakers and an old drum machine. Things fell into place and Beirut’s Hadsel was born. Condon has been making music under the Beirut name since 2005, releasing Gulag Orkestar in 2006. 17 years and seven Beirut albums later (2021’s Artifacts was a collection of singles, B-sides and unreleased work) Hadsel echoes with Condon’s trademark vocals and alt-folk and world music sensibilities. It’s also filled with a sense of exorcism that’s not yet been present in his previous work.

Admittedly, it would be hard to write an album that revolves around a church organ without it floating on an ecclesiastical, meditative undertow. Condon not only embraces this reverence, but he adds to the sensation by filling out his vocals over and over until they take the form of a church choir. (The album’s opener—and title track—is positively monastic.) This is a firmly secular set, though, and Hadsel’s spiritual side is inspired by Condon’s introspection and conscious interpretations of his Norwegian surroundings. If this sounds like the project swerves towards a world of forest bathing in sensible knitwear, rest assured that Condon’s use of inspired production ingredients keeps the album focussed. Frankly, who would have thought that a ukulele and an arsenal of home-cooked Latin American rhythms would work alongside a wheezy church organ? Zach Condon did, and he pulls it off with aplomb. Thus, the “Arctic Forest” track leans towards full-on bossa nova territory, while “Baion” is a sedated take on the Brazilian tempo of the same name that reflects the beat of the heart, all augmented by Condon’s yearning trumpet sweeps and yelps.