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With an eclecticism akin to New Weird America darling Davendra Banhart’s, Basbous uses a vast array of instrumentals, samples and choral elements to texture his lyrical delivery with a voice that has inflections of Bob Dylan’s voice-throwing baritone. “Creatures of the night ring in the sunshine,” Basbous bids us in “Beautiful,” a crazy rhythmic track that defies description and, certainly, radio play.

Basbous moved to Montréal seven years ago, fed up with the hectic, cash-strapped life he was leading in New York City. Talking to Sami, you get the sense he’s a man who has had many lives, from aspiring New Waver in late 80s NYC, to club musician, writer, and painter. But from his earliest memories, there was always music (as a child he would sing in own language instead of speaking French or Arabic at home). The untamed acoustic sound on Farewell Beirut… Basbous attributes to an epiphany: “It was the time after I was meditating and I woke up and heard orchestral music. I thought I was going crazy.”

He describes the process of making the album as an “exorcism” and as an invitation for people to share his heart and soul. “The song ‘Call the Angels’ says a lot. It’s me inviting listeners to invite me and maybe sleep together for a lifetime.”

Paradoxically, Basbous says “farewell” to Beirut with these songs, but the city remains very much on his mind for the harrowing time he spent there, convalescing in a hospital. He dedicates 10% of the album’s sales to Anwar Al-Mahabba (“the Lights of Love” in Arabic) because of an inspirational relationship with a nun who founded the organization. “She went and slept in front of the Ministry of Justice for them to change the way they treated people with HIV,” lobbying for better medical and psychiatric assistance for people in prison who were at risk of suicide during the height of the AIDS crisis. The organization is very dear to Basbous as well because of the hardships he lived there.  “I’ve gone to the core of what it means to suffer, what it is to suffer,” he reveals. “I’ve gotten a lot of flack; I’ve had people who knew me cross the street because in Lebanon it’s taboo.”

“Farewell Beirut… is about getting things done and being free from anything that labels me,” Basbous concludes. And now, as a self-defined “entrepreneur,” he plans to continue writing a screenplay, is working on his next album and exploring performance opportunities. Farewell Beirut, O Scarlet Tramp, and hello, Sami Basbous.

http://samibasbous.bandcamp.com/

www.anwaralmahabba.org