Beirut - vagabond, 2011

"The track opens with jaunty piano as if he were channeling Elton John or Ben Folds in a tribute to pop music. Twin trumpets pick up the theme and bolster it with a robust confidence as if revisiting adolescence has filled Condon with a renewed swagger. But when his vocal finally enters after the 37-second intro, it’s anything but self-assured. “Left a bag of bones, a trail of stones for to find my way home,” the rootless traveler laments, later adding, “I am lost and not found.” Both the trumpet melody and the vocal melody bear the composer’s stamp, “something personal,” but they create very different emotional effects, as if reflecting an internal dialogue between optimism and doubt. “It’s almost as if the trumpet is the character I want to be, and the voice is the character I am,” Condon confesses. “The vocal is like the shy kid at the party who wants to be the center of attention; you can try to do something about it but that something is not really who you are.”