The Flying Club Cup Exclusive LP

A Newbury Comics exclusive color vinyl pressing.

The Flying Club Cup is the second studio album by Balkan folk-influenced band Beirut, originally released on October 9, 2007.

Zach Condon said about the name and inspiration for the album: “Back in the early 1990s…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 Leon 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 I’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 brass parts that I used to do all on trumpets, and working with accordion and organ instead of all ukulele–very much throwing myself in the world of classic pop music, I guess you could say.”

Album includes a digital download.