Beach House Collectors Set

Beach House playing at Pitchfork
Music Festival in Paris.
2015
Pitchfork, paving the way for similar recep-
Despite their summery name, Beach House
creates music that is shadowy, hazy, and
auringlyhypnotic.BeachHouseisone
of the most musicay dense and textured
bands of the century. Using experimental
riffs on the guitar, keyboard, and drums,
the band produces musical contours that
can convey and evoke emotion better than
any words ever could. The dark, unsettling,
yet somehow dreamy sounds can make
you feel ethereal, or as if you’ve completely
ascended the earthly plane into some
kind of space-like dream sequence.
“One thing Victoria and I can agree on
is that our music is its own world. And,
I think that’s very much what the ‘Beach
House’ feel is: going off to a different
world,” says Scay.
The band’s rst release, the self-titled
Beach House album in 2006, received
acclaim from indie reviewing powerhouse
tion for future releases including Devotion
in 2008, Teen Dream in 2010, Bloom in 2012,
Depression Cherry in 2015, and 7 in 2018.
With each release, the band pushes the
envelope more and more, exploring even
less tangible themes and further obscuring
their meaning. Songs from Beach House,
such as “Master of None,” speak directly to
the feelings associated with specic, though
relatable, events — or, rather, as directly as
Beach House can be. Between wailing synth
and punchy lo- drum patterns, Victoria
chants, “You always go to the parties / To
pluck the feathers off a the birds / On
your knees / I would not beg you please,”
signaling the emotions of indelity of
young lust, or — to speak to something even
more painful — the indelity of a budding,
unrequited love. The idea is reinforced by
a music video showing vignettes of young
adults at a party.
Conversely, on the band’s most mature
release, 7, Legrand’s voice is help captive
by creeping synth, hypnotic chimes, and a
singular looming drum pattern on the
track “Black Car,” cooing, “We want to go
inside the cold / It’s like a tomb, but it’s
something to hold / And in the time before
it ends / When the stiness bends/I skipped
a rock and it fe to the boom.” Even
more perplexing is the accompany music
video, which merely shows close up shots
of a driverless black car. Despite the mystery,
the song transcends concrete experience
into raw thought and sentiment of that which
is a dark, dim void speckled with hints of
linguistic light.
Though there is a clear emphasis on the
texture and density of the sound and music
itself, clearly one of the most intriguing
things about Beach House is their lyrics.
Victoria’s haunting yet hypnotic voice
keeps you enthraed, whilethepoeticbut
punchy lyrics absolutely wreck your brain.
Somehow, the band can articulate seemingly
inexplicable deep human emotion, oen
using single words enshrouded by dreamy
synth or fragments of ctional events
pieced together like some kind of sick montage.
For example, on the track “Space
Song,” Victoria echos, “Fa back into place.”
The lyric has little context, but somehow it