Beirut is an indie pop/folk band that was founded by Zachary Francis Condon.  They were lucky to be playing under one of the three tented stages, or should I say the crowd was lucky.  They came on and Condon played trumpet to a good song.  A couple ones later they played "Elephant Gun", the first official Beirut music video which is as great as the song.  They did the piece of music well enough live, but somehow it did not live up to the album.  The sound mix may have been the problem since I noticed at least the xylophone could not be heard almost at all.  The next was another crowd favorite that had them cheering right as the song began.  This was followed by a new one that had an electric guitar switched from the acoustic and was not bad, though it did not go anywhere.

Condon mentioned something on stage, wondering if the ukulele would cover that "loud noise" which I assume he meant was the band playing nearby, or perhaps a sound problem.  Condon told the crowd that the seventh song was "...taught to us by some old friends."  He did not explain further though and played the song which was melancholic at first, but then picked up later and had no vocals.  Again, the xylophone could almost not be heard on the next song, but it was a great one that the crowd knew.  At the tenth song Condon said to the audience, "You guys are amazing." He then told everyone to sing along to the next song even if you did not know the lyrics.  The next started with clapping and accordion and had a build up with the drums to a very interested section of the song.  The song as a whole was dominated by the keyboards, but in a good way.  The last song was a great finish, starting with a trumpet intro and was the strongest song of the set, being the most epic.  They had smoke shoot out to aid them now and then, but it was the amazing musicianship from trumpet to french horn to xylophone to acoustic bass and more that were the dynamics of this stand up band.