The beautifully bipolar nature of Zach Condon’s latest new double-EP is obvious. Nonetheless, its vastly diverse halves — March of the Zapotec and Holland — haven’t just been split across two discs, they’re credited to two separate entities. At first glance, Condon’s apparent desire to differentiate is questionable. Given the rapturous response with which his first two Beirut albums were met, filing away the synth-pop of Holland under the Realpeople moniker could be read as an attempt to toss it off as somehow less important. On the other hand, packaging the two EPs together could be seen as a clumsy attempt to bring more awareness to his synth-pop side-project by jamming it into the same gatefold sleeve as his beloved ukelele-and-brass band.

If either March of the Zapotec or Holland were markedly weaker than the other, perhaps these would be questions worth caring about. If Realpeople hadn’t created some of the catchiest synthetic beauties since The Magnetic Fields’ Get Lost, and March of the Zapotec didn’t feel like such a natural continuation from The Flying Club Cup, then maybe there’d be reason to quibble about Condon’s arbitrary distinctions.

He hasn’t written an instantly fulfilling successor to Gulag’s “Postcards From Italy” or Flying Club’s “Nantes” (or even the Lon Gisland EP’s “Elephant Gun”), but the jumping beans of “The Akar”’ and marching-band echoes of “La Llorona” stake Zapotec’s rightful place in an already enviable catalogue. This time around, Condon absorbs and spits out Mexican brass, having moved on from The Gulag Orkestar’s fascination with all things Eastern European and The Flying Club Cup’s holiday through the south of France. As for Holland, “No Dice” is an instrumental synth piece so unforgettably uplifting it feels like the closing credit song of all of your favourite guilty pleasure movies combined. (The other four tracks are pretty good, too, particularly “My Night With the Prostitute From Marseille”).

The bottom line under it all: Zach Condon’s gone and done it again, but this time his triumph is two-fold. Despite the split, it all holds together as a satisfying next chapter, and while EPs are most often correctly classified as stopgaps between albums proper (whatever that means), March of the Zapotec and Holland are most definitely necessary listening to keep tabs on where Condon’s going next.