Gallipoli

This is the title track of Beirut's fifth album. The record takes its name from the medieval-fortressed Italian town of Gallipoli where mainman Zach Condon stumbled upon a brass band while writing and recording the record in rural Italy. The brass band procession was headed by priests who were carrying a statue of the town's saint and Condon followed the parade with his colleagues through Gallipoli's winding narrow streets. He recalled to NPR: "We happened to walk in at the exact moment as the Saint was leaving the church, carried by a bunch of priests. Behind them was this frenetic kind of brass band. [Sound] was bouncing off the walls, and simultaneously every church bell in town was ringing, which just made for utter chaos. And the city is just claustrophobic, streets winding - you would have to live there your whole life to know where you're going." Condon wrote the entire song the next day "in one sitting, pausing only to eat."