Feb. 03, 2010 - Issue #746: Spine

Beach House

Beach House
Beach House {recordings_bands_mg} Beach House {/recordings_bands_mg}
, Beach House

One thing the recently departed J.D. Salinger really understood about teenagers was that nothing just sort of happens to them: it'd probably be a bit flippant to call them melodramatic, but the fact they haven't built up adult scar tissue has a way of making them take every nick and bump as a mortal wound. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Teen Dream finds the always dreamy but usually reserved Beach House embracing the full weight of the members' joys and sorrows, plumbing depths of emotion that were always there but never quite as fully realized as they are here.
This isn't to say that the band has lost any of its subtlety or grace, though. More like its mature talents have shaken off some of wisdom's blasé; pricking a raw nerve can be as cathartic as it is painful and profound. Still here are the melodies that float like curtains in a soft breeze, the occasional flourishes of thumping urgency of its last effort, Devotion, and Victoria Legrand's vocals; cool, light and earthy as burying your feet into the sand on a scorcher. But the band is more willing to go over an edge—this is still music too airy to actually have one—exemplified in the slight differences in Legrand's voice: she's close as she's ever been to soul, and her lyrics resonate with all kinds of love and longing.

Easiest place to see this is "Real Love," which pairs little more than a metronome click and full-voiced piano against Legrand's singing, keeping the focus where it should be. The sentimental melody is enough to suggest the mood, and while Legrand's lyrics are cryptic little snippets, she tells you everything you need in the way she moans, "I met you," stretched and elevated like it's more prayer than fact. We get a more melancholy subject on "Walk in the Park," but lose none of the feeling. Electric pianos that point back to the beauty of the Zombies crash into fluttering guitars on the chorus, while Legrand cries "In a matter of time / it would slip from my mind" like an unfortunate promise, some reminder that her subject's brooding walks aren't going to keep her body around anymore than her thoughts. We should all get dumped so beautifully.

Those are highlights, but by no means on their lonesome. "Norway" engrains itself with its puppy-love "ay ay ay"s but they are snowflakes passing over a landscape that's a little more bleak and punishing. Legrand could pick "Used to Be" for her next collaboration with Grizzly Bear, her voice lilting with the piano as the song keeps adding bouncy little bits of orchestration that only add to the nostalgia. "10 Mile Stereo" heads back towards romantic territory, background synths as ghostly as Legrand's  lingering line extensions, both trying to stretch out this incredible little moment as long as it will last. It's hard to be this sunnily positive without sounding a twit, but the song never feels anything but gorgeously exhultant, the rare kind of effortless love that people besides the lovers can fully embrace.

And ultimately, it's that full embracement that makes this proably Beach House's finest. Gorgeous songs are nothing for the band anymore, but this sort of depth of feeling is rare for anyone, and an amazing pairing.V

Beach House
Teen Dream
(Merge)

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