‘A Study of Losses’ is an 18-track odyssey commissioned from Zachary by the theater and performance art company Kompani Giraff, for an acrobatic show of the same name. As a free interpretation of Judith Schalansky’s novel ‘Verzeichnis einiger Verluste,’ ‘A Study of Losses’ travels through eleven songs and seven extended instrumental themes, named after lunar seas and inspired by the chilling tale of a man obsessed with archiving all of humanity’s lost thoughts and creations. As with the novel, the new Beirut-signed album sees Condon writing about the disappearance, preservation and impermanence of everything we know: extinct animal species, lost architectural and literary treasures, the aging process and other abstract concepts.

Musically, Zachary has returned to the style of his early work, but also variations on sounds and ideas that draw on one of his all-time favorite records, ’69 Love Songs’ by Magnetic Fields. The new track ‘Guericke’s Unicorn’ is inspired by the legend of the fake unicorn fossil found in Germany in 1663, but actually composed from the bones of different animals.Zachary Condon recounts that he has always been fascinated by these kinds of bizarre stories and that the track is a reflection on the eccentric madness of that “unicorn,” a playful song somewhat disjointed from the rest of the album. The track is an outlier on the new album, born out of an old modular synth experiment of the artist’s.

After five years spent recovering from persistent throat problems that left him wondering if he would ever perform in front of an audience again, ‘A Study of Losses’ comes on the heels of ‘Hadsel,’ which marked as Pitchfork says “a new beginning for Beirut.” The sound of ‘Hadsel’ was centered on a massive, ancient church organ that Zachary Condon discovered during a dark Arctic winter in northern Norway, instead what new album is illuminated by string quartets and arrangements by cellist and collaborator Clarice Jensen.

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