One night at the beginning of last year, Zach Condon stood on stage with blood running from one ear and a broken trumpet in his hands and decided he'd had enough. His band, Beirut, had flown into Brazil earlier that day, with Condon already tired and disillusioned at the end of a long period of touring, and they'd set off for the beach, still drunk from the flight. The sea was rough and Condon was thrown about by a large wave, puncturing a hole in his eardrum. Later, when the band had checked into a hotel, he realised that something was wrong with his voice. "The doctor came and he was like, 'You've got this thing on your vocal cords, you're fucked for the rest of the trip.'" They played that night's gig anyway, but Condon, frustrated by his inability to sing properly, tried to fire up the crowd, telling them, in broken Portuguese, to dance. Something evidently got lost (or rather, exaggerated) in translation and the result was a stage invasion, in which equipment was stolen and Condon's trumpet – his main instrument on stage – left twisted in the stampede. "I remember staring at the broken trumpet. I had a broken ear, I had a broken voice and my mind was in pieces too. And I was just sitting there thinking to myself, What the fuck am I doing? How does anyone survive this?" Condon tells the story with a rueful smile. He's sitting in the corner of a central London bar at the end of a short UK tour – pale and tired, but clearly with a more relaxed attitude to the rigours of touring. "It was a weird moment.
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