Send "Beach House " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Drownedinsound |
 Time, they say, is a great healer. But equally, some things last a lifetime. Daniel Johnston said that. Which to believe? Truth is there’s not one of us who knows what strange satellites compel the ebb and flow of memories that can make loved objects seem up close one minute and impossibly remote the next, but rarely has a band seemed better attuned to the transfiguring action of time on memory than with Beach House’s self-titled 2006 debut.Their music was like waltzing wedding cake models in a music box; the sound of atrophied romance, obscure regrets and flickering confetti set to a shoegaze siren call that brought to mind the likes of Mazzy Star and Slowdive whilst gently asserting a hushed authority all of its own....full text |
| Slantmagazin |
| All my toys are dead," Victoria Legrand lamented on Beach House's 2006 self-titled debut, an album resplendent in memory and soft sadness, as hazy and emotionally affecting as an old Polaroid found at the bottom of a shoebox. Through the potent mixture of Casiotones, Alex Scally's slide guitar spangle, and Legrand's cavernous singing, Beach House found a reason for us to stay inside, under the covers, in the coldest winter and the warmest summer. Imagine a vacation retreat in Maine or the English coast, the utter opposite of a teen-filled MTV set or a Key Western palace: dreary and damp at times, but endearingly antique and cozy. Now partners Legrand and Scally—the Gillian Welch and David Rawlings of folktronica, dream pop, or whatever imprecise tag one drops on their unique sound—have returned to offer us their bittersweet bouquet once again. Devotion includes all of the same essential ingredients as its predecessor, but a ratcheting-up of intensity makes this album shine even brighter. Where previously Lagrand's vocals occasionally faltered or got lost in the mix of sped-up shoegaze, here she of the many Nico comparisons is comfortably out front. In fact, Lagrand's vocal performance on Devotion is as masterful a one as you're likely to hear in 2008. She reigns and rains, sultry and big-throated, whispering love and shouting anger, while Scally lays down the shimmering landscape that Lagrand's voice floats above. On opening stunner "Wedding Bell," Legrand belts out the rhetorical (at least to me) "Oh, is your heart still mine to sail?" like a fully-formed diva. "Don't you waste your time," she coos on "Gila," with the sexy coldheartedness of Estella Havisham, before breathlessly rattling out the chorus of nearly two dozen, orgasmic oh's. "Heart of Chambers" has Legrand gliding from upper to lower registers, playfully splitting one-syllable wordlets into Rihanna-like vocal ellipses ("With your picture books and ancient wih-ih-ih-it") and then drawing out the coda in graceful legato. The accompaniment to Lagrand's star turn is consistently interesting even if it maybe tries too hard not to be overly dramatic: It's mostly quiet strumming, jangling percussion, and busy, elegiac keyboards. It's possible to believe that if this band ever tires of killing with quietness and powerful beauty, they have it in them to dabble further in noise and space-rock. For now, though, holding back is working pretty damn well....full text |
| Pitchforkmedia |
| Baltimore is as musically diverse as anywhere else, but in 2008, indie rockers associate the city with colorful, energetic music, from the expatriated Animal Collective to Dan Deacon's Wham City crew. The music of Beach House, the Baltimore-based duo of multi-instrumentalist Alex Scally and vocalist/organist Victoria Legrand, is a shadow narrative running parallel to this trend: Their delicate, lovelorn pop comes in the form of deathly waltzes and dark pastoral dirges on which Legrand sings about desire, loss, and dreams as if telling a ghost story, splitting the difference between lovely and creepy. For pristine pop, Beach House's self-titled 2006 debut was awfully raw: Legrand downplayed her classical piano and voice training in a humble negation of virtuosity. The organs sounded like something thick and coarse being pulled through a small, jagged opening; chord structures were simply suggestions; imperfections were kept intact. That balance of beauty and imprecision made inspired songs like "Saltwater", "Tokyo Witch", "Apple Orchard", and "Master of None" easy to fall in love with. The duo's songwriting hasn't fundamentally changed on Devotion; they've simply cleaned up their act. These are crisper, brighter, bolder songs, retaining Beach House's sense of elegant decay while sweeping up the debris. "Gila" is a funeral on a sunny day; its shimmering organs are controlled, never bleeding chaotically as they did on the debut, and are complemented by frilly but steadfast guitar. "Turtle Island" reaffirms Beach House's preference for simple, skeletal percussion, but its dense melody is a marked advancement. The result of this pre-spring cleaning is that Devotion lacks some of the immediate highs of the first album-- you no longer get the sense of rooting for an embattled underdog-- but winds up consistently stronger....full text |
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