A Trisk of becoming unable to sing due to health problems, Zach Condon felt like he had no choice but to abruptly halt Beirut’s tour in late 2019. But as Condon tells Uncut, the voice issue “was just physical evidence of what was always going on underneath: the terror and the world-swallowing doom and loneliness I tended to feel on tour since I was 19, which I’d been drowning out with booze. Part of working on this record was just looking at that monster in the backseat and saying, ‘I can live with this – in fact, I’ve got to.’”