Thank God For Richard Moll

Beirut "Elephant Gun"

[right click to download, ctrl or option click if yr a mac!]

Its the end of the line for "new release week" here at Pop Zeus, so I thought I'd finally put up something I liked. Beirut obviously got the title of their latest EP Lon Gisland from an episode of the television show Night Court. Let me explain how I know this. I remember a scene on the show where a hooker said something about a Lon Gisland Iced Tea with a thick Jersey accent to the honorable judge Harry Anderson, which prompted him to ask "Whats a Lon Gisland Iced Tea?", mimicing her ridiculous accent. Do not ask me why this is the one and only joke I remember from a show that hasn't even run in syndication since the 80s. Just don't ask.

Lon Gisland is a beautiful collection of songs recorded with passion by a collection of versatile musicians. The wide variety of instrumentation on this record incontrovertibly brings to mind Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, but don't get too excited. Its not THAT good. 99.9 percent of records aren't.

However Beirut has recorded an excellent record that will cause your mind to drift to other places as you hear it. Like to that moment when you were going to talk to that girl you liked but you leaned on the table she was sitting at and knocked it over, causing several pints of beer to spill on her lap. Not knowing what else to do, you bolted out of the pub and down the street as fast as you could, not knowing where you were headed but that you just had to get the fuck out of there.

Well, at least that's where I drifted off to, anyway. And said girl, if yr reading this: sorry.