Beach House: 7

BEACH HOUSE: 7 (2018)

1) Dark Spring; 2) Pay No Mind; 3) Lemon Glow; 4) LʼInconnue; 5) Drunk In LA; 6) Dive; 7) Black Car; 8) Lose Your Smile; 9) Woo; 10) Girl Of The Year; 11) Last Ride.

General verdict: Making cosmetic adjustments to oneʼs sonic formula at the expense of hooks and original musical ideas is typically not a very good plan... but perhaps in 2018 itʼs the only plan that could work anyway.

The more it changes, the more it stays Beach House. Having previously released their B-Sides And Rarities as a separate album, Legrand and Scally stated that they were done "cleaning out the closet" and hinted at a new direction with their next project. It is safe to assume that nobody really expected them to move on to polkacore or vapormetal, but if change we must, then even the most minimal deviations from the established formula would inevitably end up in the very center of critical discussion. And indeed, be prepared to hear from a lot of different sides about how the duo has evolved, how they are taking risks, how they are moving outside established boundaries — in short, paraphrasing Dylan, "itʼs not Beach House, itʼs Beach Home!"

They even changed their producer, moving from long-term partner Chris Coady to Sonic Boom (Peter Kember) of Spacemen 3 fame; since the latter seems to be somewhat more versatile in the world of digital sound than the former, one could possibly expect more electronic textures, and, indeed, a few of the tracks are quite nastily splattered with the ubiquitous «church organ in your pocket» synth tones of the 2010s that mainstream and indie artists seem to love just about the same. That is, however, not a problem in itself. The problem is that, while I, like everybody else, can clearly see a desire to evolve here, I wish to God it was never present.

7 features a denser, heavier sound than all their earlier records — ʽDark Springʼ opens things with a full-on heavy drum roll, something that would be unimaginable in the early days, and the track is so bass-heavy that with but a few extra production tweaks, it could have become rock, something in the vein of British Sea Power or even Arcade Fire. Because of the icy restraint of the players and of Victoriaʼs predictably somnambulant vocals, it does not quite get to that level, but the damage has been done: ʽDark Springʼ is less magical and moody than classic Beach House stuff, but it does not compensate for this with rocking energy or dynamic instrumental passages. It also does not have even a single memorable hook: Legrand recites, rather than truly sings, the lyrics in a tired-sounding, monotonous manner, accompanied by a generic minimalist indie chord pattern — and at the end, Scally lets rip with an equally minimalist solo that sounds exactly like the average stuff on any given British Sea Power album.

My major disappointment in the album are the vocals. I do not know if Victoria happened to lose all her higher range or if this was intentional, but pretty much all the album is delivered at a single frequency, in a single mood, regardless of the tonality, tempo, or mood of the music. The difference between verses and choruses has been nullified by this approach, and with it, the only hope for me to memorize some of the songs (and yes, I still remember ʽZebraʼ and ʽUsed To Beʼ with their lovely dream-pop curvatures). But then the music, too, has become substantially less interesting: they may have changed the producer, added more drums ʼnʼ bass, but arguably the only time where the record tries to offer something out-of-the-ordinary is on ʽBlack Carʼ, which has a funny looped arpeggiated chiming pattern all over the place — in no way original (I think they end up sounding like the great late Broadcast that way), but at least temporarily pulling my attention out of the solid slumber state.

Also, after a few listens ʽDrunk In LAʼ suddenly emerged as the most disturbed and desperate song on the album, almost a cry for help — well, as much of a cry for help as you could expect from somebody frozen in liquid nitrogen. Maybe if they really took a serious risk and dared to break that musical ice, instead of solidifying it even further with all the new (old) keyboard tones, the song could have struck a genuine emotional chord. As it is, welcome to yet another teensy-weensy little deviation from the formula. For the same reason, I cannot fall head over heels in love with the «bold» transition from quiet dream-pop to loud arena-pop in the middle of ʽDiveʼ: the first half is too lulling and hookless — the second half sounds like somebody, well, totally half-assing it. If I want that kind of sound done properly, I will go to Arcade Fire. Otherwise, guys, just do what you do best — except that you seem to have sort of forgotten what it is.

With no desire whatsoever to talk about the other songs (if you have heard one, you pretty well have a good idea about them all), I will simply sum up that Beach House certainly stay true to their general conception and spirit on the album, and that their arduous task at upholding their «AC/DC of dream pop» reputation goes on unhindered (maybe Sonic Boom should be considered their personal ʽMuttʼ Lange, bringing their music into the next era of sound while at the same time making sure that nothing essential has changed). But the fact that these days it only takes a few tiny production tweaks to make critical opinion go "woo-wee, best album ever since their previous best album ever!" is funny — and depressing.

Beach House: Thank Your Lucky Stars

BEACH HOUSE: THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS (2015)

1) Majorette; 2) She's So Lovely; 3) All Your Yeahs; 4) One Thing; 5) Common Girl; 6) The Traveller; 7) Elegy To The Void; 8) Rough Song; 9) Somewhere Tonight.

Well, yes, thank your lucky stars that instead of releasing one huge album, Alex and Victoria decided to split it in two and put out two small packages — because, honestly, there is no stylistic difference whatsoever between Depression Cherry and its unexpected follow-up, and the very decision to have it out seems to me as largely a show of artistic unpredictability: these days, we are so totally unaccustomed to artists coming up with new product so quickly that «wow, Beach House actually managed to release two albums in one year!» will probably be a hotter topic for discussion than the essence of the albums in question.

As for that essence, well... here we have nine more Beach House songs that are totally typical Beach House songs, not a single one breaking the mold of Depression Cherry, which, in turn, stretches all the way back to the mold of Beach House. Same vocal and instrumental textures, same recycled ideas. Had they had the nerve to come up with two such albums in rock music's golden age, critics would have immediately written them off as conservative has-beens, only too happy to jump the shark in their washed-up smugness; today, both albums seem to be getting rave reviews from critics who have completely forgotten what it is to think big, and it drives me nuts, and the only explanation is that they take Beach House to be little more than a set of pretty sounds that constitute food for the brain much the same way as regular food constitutes food for the stomach. A couple hours for digestion, and then...

...the problem is, why would we want to spend money or extra effort on it, when we have the old records? Oh, that's right: Beach House and Devotion were then, and Thank Your Lucky Stars is now. This is supposed to be more contemporary, more relevant, more relatable to the way they — and you — feel today about stuff. This is Beach House Vista, 2015 edition. Unfortunately, I haven't quite forgotten the old edition yet, and as a (potentially) paying customer, I see no seri­ous incentive for upgrading. I want floating icons and shit, goddammit. I have no problem giving an extra spin to ʽGilaʼ or ʽUsed To Beʼ instead of saying, "oh wait, I have already listened to these songs once, have I? What kind of idiot would want to listen to the same song twice? Now a dif­ferent song that sounds exactly like those two, but with slightly different chords — that's far more suitable for a true music lover's ears!"

Okay, I apologize and will try to atone by saying a few good things about these songs. (They're actually quite nice songs, by the way — it's not their fault that their so-called authors have de­cided to, like, write them). ʽShe's So Lovelyʼ is a stately, melancholic, slide guitar-embellished lesbian anthem (I have no idea about Victoria's sexual orientation, but in Beach House's fantasy world, the very idea of sexual orientation may be completely different from our usual ones anyway) — the vocal modulations on the verses have a strangely tragic aspect, though. ʽAll Your Yeahsʼ starts off with a somewhat unusually ominous, maybe even nervous guitar line — too nervous for this band, whose emotions usually run in perfectly formed and balanced sinusoids. ʽElegy To The Voidʼ must have been inspired either by Mozart's Requiem, or by ʽComfortably Numbʼ, or by both — and it eventually culminates in an aggressively howling solo (yes, it must be the void — it heard the elegy, and now it's coming for you!). ʽRough Songʼ is this band's equi­valent of The Rolling Stones' ʽGirls Need More Respectʼ... wait, what are you saying? the Stones never had a song like that? well, Beach House never had any «rough songs» either. This one, in particular, is as smooth as Victoria's... oh never mind.

I enjoyed listening to the record, but a thumbs up? You gotta be kidding. These guys are, like, artists. Evolve, goddammit. Do not confirm my pessimistic suspicions that there's no direction left to evolve. Don't give me these multiple entities beyond necessity. And do not think you can get away by simply naming your album after a nearly-forgotten TV show. Or should this be taken as a hint that from now on, your output will be as interchangeable as most of the hit singles they broadcast on it circa 1961?

Beach House: Depression Cherry

BEACH HOUSE: DEPRESSION CHERRY (2015)

1) Levitation; 2) Sparks; 3) Space Song; 4) Beyond Love; 5) 10:37; 6) PPP; 7) Wildflower; 8) Bluebird; 9) Days Of Candy.

You know, despite the fact that the sound of Beach House has evolved over the years — arguably reaching a «grandeur peak» with Teen Dream and mostly staying there with Bloom — frankly speaking, it's not that much of an evolution. Everywhere you look, you still find largely the same formula of misty-moisty dream-pop with chiming keyboards and floating guitars and Galadriel vocals. Therefore, to read that "this record shows a return to simplicity" in their press release is, to say the least, dismaying; and to read, just a few lines later, that "here, we continue to let our­selves evolve while fully ignoring the commercial context in which we exist" is downright terri­fying. Not to mention that, you know, they are actually selling this record — they cannot "fully" ignore the commercial context in which they exist unless they feed on wild fruits of the jungle and drink water from pure, untainted mountain streams. An impression that their music might convey, for that matter, but then don't they, like, need to at least pay for studio time?..

Anyway, Depression Cherry — a rather awful title, if I may so suggest — is indeed a conscious return to the rather subdued, minimalist textures of the band's first two albums, where they did not use real drums or, indeed, much of anything beyond ancient-sounding keyboards, guitars, and the pssht-pssht drum machine. The question is — why? «Evolving» with this working pattern is pretty much out of the question, as the music has almost exactly the same moods, tones, tempos, associations as it «used to be». Fine, so we have already established them to be the AC/DC of dream-pop, but even AC/DC could get dull after a while, unless the Young brothers sat down and crapped out a particularly fine batch of new (if still derivative) riffs. What about these guys? Bloom could still grow on you with time. Do these songs still have any fresh signs of magic, slowly, but steadily working on your brain?

A few, I'd say. Speaking of riffage, the main riff of ʽSpace Songʼ weaves a beautiful pattern in­deed, although I couldn't say the same about the bubbly space-synth countermelody that domi­nates the bridge section — they should have rather allowed the guitar to build upon that riff. ʽBe­yond Loveʼ also has a great guitar tone — colorful, sustained, slightly distorted, perfectly atte­nuating Victoria's vocals. And the two extended tracks, ʽPPPʼ, and ʽDays Of Candyʼ, have those trademark hypnotizing Beach House codas — ʽPPPʼ turns into a fairyland waltz that manages to be completely sentimental and totally non-corny at the same time, and the wailing lead guitar line of ʽDays Of Candyʼ is a simple-graceful-magical way to finish the album, but... but...

...ultimately, it's unsatisfactory. All of this is just way, way, way too safe, cozy, comfortable, predictable, expectable. All the tricks of the trade have been learned, studied, reproduced, all the techniques explained and chewed over, including the technique of always playing the same chord at least twice or thrice before turning it over to the next one — otherwise, you know, you can create the sense of «rushed», or, even worse, entrap Beach House in the boring layman conven­tions of that stupid old fourth dimension called «time». And timelessness is the essence of the Beach House sound — woe to him who suddenly gets the impulse to ask, "oh wait, haven't I already heard this song before?" Before? What before? There is no before, or after. There's just "a place I want to take you / When the unknown will surround you" (ʽLevitationʼ). Wait! you cry, I frickin' know this place already, I've been in that place since 2006! No, no, they say, that won't do. In the world of Beach House, there is no 2006, or 2015. "There is no right time", she sings, "you will grow too quick, then you will get over it".

Coming back to our senses (briefly), I should conclude that Depression Cherry has its moments, but that its ideology of «getting back to basics» is flawed to the core, because (a) this band had never moved too far away from its basics in the first place, (b) this band had already explored its basics so thoroughly that deliberately returning there almost feels like an auto-lobotomy, and (c) who do they think they are — the Beatles on the friggin' rooftop? No thumbs up, thank you very much, though I do single out ʽSpace Songʼ here as particularly luvvable. Apparently, all of their space is dressed in red velvet, and each asteroid is inhabited by its own native siren.

Beach House: Bloom

BEACH HOUSE: BLOOM (2012)

1) Myth; 2) Wild; 3) Lazuli; 4) Other People; 5) The Hours; 6) Troublemaker; 7) New Year; 8) Wishes; 9) On The Sea; 10) Irene.

For about fourty seconds, ʽIreneʼ, the last official song on this album, hangs on a single, extre­me­ly shrill, almost mind-torturing note, as if Victoria Legrand finally got stuck in her own loop and were only too happy to stick there for eternity. This only happens once, but it is still highly sym­bolic of the entire record. Bloom abandons any weak attempts that Teen Dream might have to broaden and stretch out the band's sound — and sticks to the good old formula, tried and true, more loyally than any Beach House album so far. Not only are the diligent duo not attempting at all to «progress»: on the contrary, they are doing everything in their power to let us know that here they are, and here they will stay. Apparently, for Scully and Legrand, this is perfection, and as long as they continue to make music, there is no need to move away from perfection.

I do not generally believe in remaking the same message ten times in a row, and I had hopes for at least another Teen Dream, where you could at least move from ʽZebraʼ to ʽNorwayʼ to ʽUsed To Beʼ without a feeling of being force-fed the same meal over and over again. No surprise that the first reaction was vicious hatred. Again, song ofter song that creeps along at a static midtempo, rolling over trivial synthesizer rhythms and minimalistic «heavenly guitar» countermelodies. Again, Victoria Legrand is playing her role of yer sympathetic ghost from the closet, blowing mystical fluff into your ears, seductive as long as you do not start interpreting the lyrics. Again, it all sounds imposing, important, and impervious, and the listener is manipulated into kowtowing before the stately, holy iciness... of whom? an exhausted, depleted one-trick pony? Come on!

Fortunately, once the initial disappointment sinks in and you realize that, after all, everybody has a right to the «AC/DC work method» as long as that method is applied to work, not just to dick­ing around, it gets better — much better. Eventually, it becomes evident that there is some pro­gress, and that progress is in Legrand's ever-increasing skill of coming up with wonderful vocal melodies and delivering them with the experience of a well-seasoned sorceress.

And eventually, Bloom just emerges as a container of some of Victoria's subtlest and prettiest hooks. It's too bad that they are never used as song titles, triggering the memory centers with tra­ditional pop ease. The album opener, ʽMythʼ, should probably have been called ʽHelp Me To Name Itʼ, because it is exactly the falsetto transition to that line that really «makes» the song, pushing it from «simply solemn» to «magically transfigured» mode. ʽWildʼ should be ʽGo On Pretendingʼ — there is a deliciously unresolved arcanum in the way she draws out that line, with maybe just the faintest tinge of irony, but well enough to separate the one cool fairy from a series of generic alumni of the Magical Mystery School.

ʽThe Hoursʼ, of course, should be ʽFrightened Eyes (Looking Back At Me)ʼ — and, while we're on it, it is hard not to notice that the opening aaaah aaaah harmonies are a direct reference to the Beatles' vocal arrangements on ʽBecauseʼ; not that this should surprise anyone, since, if there is one Beatles song that could serve as the blueprint for Beach House, it is ʽBecauseʼ (yes, yes, here again, John Lennon did it earlier and did it better, but let us not hold that against anybody). As a matter of fact, the song also has some of the finest guitar-based hooks on the album as well.

In the end, my personal favorite of the bunch has emerged as ʽNew Yearʼ. It isn't for much: you can't get «much» of any single song on here, but it beats 'em all in one ungrammatical line: "All I wanted comes in colors vanish every day", sung with such humane sadness that it gets real hard not to be moved. Sometimes one line like that is enough to distinguish the real thing from the fac­simile, and this, mind you, is the real thing.

So, in the end, Bloom is a retreat from Teen Dream into more conventional territory — but it is like Devotion done really well, with better production, better guitars, better keyboards, fewer drum machines (the pssht-pssht effect is still present on a few of the tracks, but most of the time it's real drums), better vocal hooks, more credible sentiments, and, overall, simply more mature, as the duo's fairy-tale world enters adulthood and the protagonist, armed with extra spell credits, is now able to weave the love magic on an advanced level.

There are still a couple really weak songs here, I'd say, on which the hooks never succeed in ma­terializing (ʽOther Peopleʼ, for instance, sounds too much like generic pop balladry, despite being arranged the same way as everything else), but that is, in itself, a sign of maturity — the very fact that, with such a similar approach to everything, some songs step out of the background and some do not means that the duo is now going for something larger than sheer atmosphere. Also, the silly old trick of adding a «hidden» track after about six or seven minutes of silence never truly works, because the track itself is easily the most boring thing on the album — but this probably explains why it was «hidden» in the first place.

But neither complaint will prevent Bloom from getting a thumbs up — and that title might even be justified, because you can really feel these two guys «blooming», self-assured and totally in control over their strictly limited, but honest trade. I'm glad I did not give in to the initial tempta­tion of trashing the album. On the chronological scale, it is no progressive masterpiece, but in terms of sheer craft and feeling, it annihilates the band's first two albums, which now seem like half-baked, preliminary attempts to «get things right».

Check "Bloom" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Bloom" (MP3) on Amazon

Beach House: Teen Dream

BEACH HOUSE: TEEN DREAM (2010)

1) Zebra; 2) Silver Soul; 3) Norway; 4) Walk In The Park; 5) Used To Be; 6) Lover Of Mine; 7) Better Times; 8) 10 Mile Stereo; 9) Real Love; 10) Take Care.

An amazingly accurate title. Brings on associations with Brian Wilson's «teenage symphonies», replaces the «symphony» bit (hardly appropriate for Beach House, whose minimalistic sound is anything but symphonic) with the «dream» of «dream-pop», and looks as innocent and simple as possible without looking silly and vapid.

With this title, Beach House make the inevitable transition to the big time; inevitable, because the sympathy that they bred so carefully among the indie critics should have eventually pushed them up the ladder, and it did. Not only was Teen Dream recorded in a church building (obviously a step up from Scally's bedroom) under the supervision of well-known indie producer Chris Coady, but it was also subsequently released on the Sub Pop label — not exactly Warner Bros. level, but relatively notorious all the same — and hit the Billboard charts. What's most important, though, is that there are REAL DRUMS! REAL DRUMS! Or, at least, decent imitations.

As for the songs and the magic — this is a really tough question. There have been changes, yes, but, just like before, you have to work in order to notice them. Generally, there is more dynamics; if, on their first and second albums, you did not usually need to go beyond the first twenty se­conds or so to find out what it was all about, the songs on Teen Dream frequently rely on build-ups, with additional keyboard and guitar lines rolling in (e. g. '10 Mile Stereo', where Scully eve­ntually starts a series of psychedelic trills similar to Cream's 'Dance The Night Away'), or with pompous codas swelling the melody ('Walk In The Park', 'Take Care').

Beyond that, it is hard to make any generalizations. Cautiously, I would suggest the idea that the guitar sound is more important to the effect of Teen Dream than it used to be; it is hardly coin­cidental that the album's opener, 'Zebra', begins with a minute-long folksy guitar drone, and the keyboards do not join in until later, and even then they form an atmospheric wall carpeting rather than the melodic backbone. This may actually explain the irritation of some long-term fans who complained about Teen Dream sounding like «standard indie»: people who fell in love with the band based on Legrand's ambient synthesizer patterns will definitely feel occasional lack of oxy­gen in these songs. On the other hand, those who mostly viewed Beach House and Devotion as a set of pretty lullabies might want to form another opinion.

As for the tricky issue of «how many meaningful melodies does the record provide?», all I can say is that, on the whole, I feel more pleased by it than Devotion. At the very least, the first five songs all register. 'Zebra' is a paean to zebras — well, not really, but I like to think of it as such, and Legrand's chorus of 'any way you run, you run before us' is very evocative in tandem with Scully's picking. 'Silver Soul' is terrific nerd entertainment if you are hungry for Harry Potter-style magic. The sound of 'Norway' is, perhaps, the duo's biggest original achievement so far: the «wobbly» effect that they get with their guitar and organ processing adds an extra color to the already oversaturated palette of psychedelia, and the Norwegians, completely free of charge, have now received their country's new national anthem (granted, they could always refuse on the ra­tional grounds that the song has nothing whatsoever to do with Norway, but why should they?). 'Walk In The Park' is stately, and I wish I knew what the 'more, you want more...' coda was all about, because it is beautiful.

Finally, the single 'Used To Be' is their simplest, catchiest, and most childish song to date — a re-recording, actually, of an older version that had already appeared in 2008, and, as we now under­stand, heralded the arrival of a moderately updated, livelier, jumpier Beach House («jumpy» is a much better term here than «danceable», because 'Used To Be' must really be a great song to jump to when you are three years old). But oh the frustration! Out of three equally possible op­tions — loving it, ha­ting it, or failing to notice it — I cannot choose a single one. Loving it seems stupid (can you admit to «loving» 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'?), hating it would be overreacting, and failing to notice it would be impossible, since I am already writing about it.

And, in a way, this is indicative of the entire album. Again, we have these two people inviting us to believe in their magic, and you can choose between faith and skepticism. It is one of those ca­ses where I almost equally sympathize with those fans who are ready to drop their tools and fol­low Legrand and Scully to the end of the world and those haters who would like to see the duo tarred, feathered, and driven out of town for good. Middle ground is useless — there is no reason whatsoever to listen to Beach House if you are not deeply in love with them.

In my case, Teen Dream still has not convinced me of the necessity of this enamouration, but there are enough flashes of beauty, and enough signs of growth (as well as delightful obstinate conservatism, which can also be a good thing), to warrant this from a negative judgement. So let us say that, while the heart still refuses to open its doors wide to these guys, it at least tolerates their serenading on the porch; and, while the brain insists that they still know much less than is ne­cessary to know about weaving your dreams into music (as compared to the Cocteau Twins, for instance), it also admits that they know enough to be treated seriously, and that it will be curious to learn where they will be going to head from here, if anywhere. Oh, and is this the best Beach House album so far? Well, it's definitely the first Beach House album so far where I am able to say five different things about five songs in a row. Maybe that makes it eligible, and maybe it does not. A vague album deserves a vague judgement. But thumbs up, all the same.

Beach House: Devotion

BEACH HOUSE: DEVOTION (2008)

1) Wedding Bell; 2) You Came To Me; 3) Gila; 4) Turtle Island; 5) Holy Dances; 6) All The Years; 7) Heart Of Chambers; 8) Some Things Last A Long Time; 9) Astronaut; 10) D.A.R.L.I.N.G; 11) Home Again.

If Beach House want to become the AC/DC of dream pop, they are well on the way with their second album. Nothing has changed: each single part of the general description of their sound in 2006 is equally applicable here. This concludes the most significant part of my review, but per­haps a little postscriptum is in order.

First, they may be a little fuller and plumper here; after all, a debut is always a debut, and you al­ways learn a little by the time you start producing your sophomore effort. So the keyboards are more dense, and the pssht-pssht percussion more muffled and thus less annoying. The singing is more trying, especially on songs like 'Gila' where Legrand experiments with pitch, and on 'Heart Of Chambers', where she shows her range (which actually exists). And they produced no less than three different musical videos, which is about two more than before. Progress!

Second, I really like the two songs mentioned above. They are melodic, evocative, and catchy, and just about the only two songs on the record whose magic actually works. Why, I have no idea. Certainly not because of the lyrics that typically look something like this: 'In your heart of cham­bers where you sit / With your picture books and ancient wit / In that nook I found you / So old and tired / Would you be the one to carry me?' If this verse looks okay to you, how about the next one: 'Made our iron bed side cold as graves / So we stoke the organs that may comfort grace / And they conjured spirits to make you smile / Would you be my long time baby?'

But it is true: my stoked organs do comfort grace and conjure spirits to make me smile whenever I hear that song. It is suitably stately, appropriately grand, and mixes traditional melody and inno­vative incomprehensibility with enough conviction to register itself in my mind. So does 'Gila', whose point, as I see it, is to create an old-time feeling of nostalgia constrained by a tragic — but not thoroughly tragic — understanding of being unable to satisfy that feeling. Actually, this is pretty much what Beach House are all about: recreate the future by exploring the past. Or was that vice versa?

Sadly, the two singles seem to be the pivotal elements around which I can only see a lot of end­lessly revolving filler. This is inevitably what happens when you record a bunch of same-sound­ing tunes, two or three of which are notably stronger than the rest. By including 'Gila' and 'Heart Of Chambers', they made me think of individual songs rather than the overall picture, and where Beach House worked primarily as homebrewn enchanting ambience, Devotion attempts to put on slightly different faces as it goes along, and it does not work. Once 'Gila' is replaced by the far less interesting 'Turtle Island', you may feel a pang of disappointment, and since nothing kills magic more efficiently than a good pang of disappointment, Devotion may crumble right under your very eyes, as it very nearly crumbled before mine.

Then again, it may not. If you loved Beach House — and I never loved it — you will never be disappointed by the follow-up. Instead, you will feel that Legrand's nonsensical lyrics merely re­flect the existence of a parallel world, difficult to understand on the part of a mere mortal, and that you are ready to accommodate yourself to its living conditions, even if, as a side effect, they involve listening to stupid electronic percussion. And I will try to understand your feelings, even if I will have a decidedly hard time learning to respect them. In the meantime, I will surreptitious­ly whisk 'Gila' and 'Heart Of Chambers' off this record and spoil your fun by giving the rest a mischievous thumbs down. This is just not my ideal of a good dream-pop album.

Beach House: Beach House

BEACH HOUSE: BEACH HOUSE (2006)

1) Saltwater; 2) Tokyo Witch; 3) Apple Orchard; 4) Master Of None; 5) Auburn And Ivory; 6) Childhood; 7) Love­lier Girl; 8) House On The Hill; 9) Heart And Lungs.

HE is Alex Scally, grown up in Baltimore, Maryland, where there are no beaches, and playing guitar and some keyboards when he feels like it. SHE is Victoria Legrand, grown up somewhere around the same place, and playing keyboards and singing when she feels like it. Together they are Beach House. Why Beach House? No one knows for sure.

What we do know for sure is that these days, it does not take much to be able to create psychede­lic-ious otherworldly magic. The duo's debut album was recorded in Scally's home, released on a tiny indie label, and still sounds like it has travelled to us all the way from Wonderland. Certainly, there are signs of cheapness all over the place — the most obvious and ugly of these is the syn­the­sized pshht-pshht percussion, which can spoil much of the fun; sometimes I find myself wish­ing they hadn't included any rhythmic support at all — or at least bothered to install a mini-drum set. Then again, these days it is not that hard to synthesize a «proper» drum sound either, so I guess we have to take this as an intended part of the picture. Apparently, there are people in this world who like pshht-pshht percussion, believe it or not.

Nevertheless, many were charmed with this strange mix of sonic magic and DIY attitude, and I can see why — the music is, at the same time, complex enough to understand that this is not just another couple of starry-eyed amateurs overpricing their egos, and yet simple enough, with even a touch of child­ish naïveness, to disarm the potential haters. Plus, although many possible influ­en­ces come to mind, it is hard to directly trace the sound that they achieve to a single source, so as to be able to say «Anyone who is already a fan of [insert some big name here] will find listen­ing to Beach House a waste of time». In fact, some of the standard comparisons were downright misguided — the most common comparison of Legrand's singing, for instance, that you will find is to that of Nico, which would miss the point entirely. For one thing, Nico is (was) German; Vic­toria is American, of French descent. For another, think of all the implications.

(I would, of course, favor a comparison with Cocteau Twins — but only as yet another example of a creative male-female duo with their own conception of a musical cosmogony, because musi­cally, there is very little in common between the two, and technically, it would take Beach House a long, long time to catch up with the advanced level of the Twins).

Beach House do not strive for diversity, nor for catchiness; their aim is to set up one specific mood, wire the listener up to it and keep him electrified for about thirty five minutes. The typical Beach House song is a three-four-minute mid-tempo drone, consisting of a moody synth hum in the background, a fairy-tale synth melody in the foreground, and sliding guitar flourishes in the middle. And the vocals, of course, whose only technical similarity to Nico's lies in their slightly mechanic flavour — Legrand often keeps the same note for the entire line — otherwise, they are far more «human» and closer to the listener. In fact, for all the parallel-reality-quality of this kind of music, one rarely gets the feeling that this other world is impenetrable. It isn't exactly inviting, but its constituency is something that you will probably crack quite easily. There is nothing on here that makes me go: «What the hell was that?» or «How in the world did they come up with this aura?» Of course, it is partially due to the cheapness of the production, but also, probably, to the lack of excessive ambition. And it works.

The songs flow so gently and, more often than not, unnoticeably into one another that it is impos­sible for me to choose favorites or attempt multiple individual descriptions. 'Apple Orchard' and 'Mas­ter Of None' are probably the best known tracks, and the double drifting of the lazy old-fashioned or­gan and the sweet old-fashioned slide guitar is as emblematic of the band's whole approach as anything else. Why did I say «old-fashioned»? Probably a subconscious call trigger­ed by a glance at the lyrics: 'Let's lie down for a while, you can smile, lay your hair in the old old fashion'. Which, pretty much, sums up the basic message of the album.

Beach House is far from a masterpiece, yet it is friendly, lovely, and graceful. It is also immu­table, monotonous, and boring. But I find that it helps if you think about it as a lovingly hand-made musical box, produced to accompany some retroish phantasmagoric show — a hint at which may actually be provided by the duo's official video to 'Master Of None'. And, just like any such show, it will hardly charm and bewilder the jaded listener, but it will make his life a little brighter, if he happens to be in need of a bit of extra brightness. As long as we do not expect these guys to rip our confined world apart, this is by all means a thumbs up.