Beirut - The Flying Club Cup Vinyl LP

The Flying Club Cup is the second studio album by Balkan folk-influenced band Beirut, originally released on October 9, 2007. Condon said about the name and inspiration for the album: "Back in the early 1900s...there used to be this hot air balloon festival in Paris—[the album's] titled after that and after this very bizarre 1910 photo I found [by Léon Gimpel]. It's one of the first color photos ever made, at the World's Fair, and it...shows all these ancient hot air balloons about to take off in the middle of Paris. I just thought it was the most surreal image l'd seen in a long time."

He also said about the album sound: "I was listening to a lot of Jacques Brel and French chanson music—pop songs shrouded in big, glorious, over-the-top arrangements and all this drama-and that was in some sense unfamiliar territory to me. So I started buying new instruments and relying on things I wasn't necessarily comfortable with, like French horns and euphoniums, carrying these big, epic big brass parts that I used to do al on trumpets, and working with accordion and organ instead of all ukulele-very much throwing myself in the world of classical pop music, I guess you could say."