Record Review: Beach House - Teen Dream

via Ragged Words
By Daniel Greenwood
Rating: 9/10

In Three Words: Ignore The Hype!

Hype can be a terrible thing. Personally, the stir whipped up around Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest made them partially unlistenable in 2009. It’s not just because people like those records so much (and talk about them so much), it’s that it removes what’s once personal about a record, as is evident on the earlier work of those bands. Feels is Animal Collective at their loneliest, and Yellow House is Grizzly Bear half-asleep in the dusty nook of a cabin somewhere. If MPP and Veckatimest are ‘unlistenable’ now, it’s only because the light at the heart of the records might take years to really make itself known to any of us (especially Grizzly Bear’s efforts).

A fragment of the hype surrounding Grizzly Bear fell upon Beach House the moment Victoria Legrand lent her hearty swoon to Veckatimest’s ‘Two Weeks’. It’s a song that feels more like a Beach House impression on the part of Ed Droste, admittedly a huge fan of Legrand’s band. And expectation has been high for the sandy-soled Baltimoreans ever since. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally are being tipped get global. Gladly, on Teen Dream, any worldwide euphoria is tentative, and the things that make this band so appealing remain in the surf of these songs.

Teen Dream begins and ends in earnest. ‘Zebra’ is an opening lament of someone or something that got away: ‘Don’t I know you better than the rest,’ sings Legrand. It might also be a neat metaphor for the music itself, the personal connection you can have with a song you love, as if it was all your own. In the end, this entity, this thing you’re after, it’s like Legrand’s black and white horse running before her, ‘arching among us’.

The finale, ‘Take Care’, is the album’s strongest song both melodically and in seeing the duo return to their roots. Legrand’s voice dips and peaks, piggybacking Scally’s looping licks. ‘I’ll take care of you/if you ask me to/in a year or two,’ goes the refrain. Legrand is back to the voice of old – the wishful heart of both Beach House and Devotion.

In between these two pillars are eight songs that see Beach House attempt to lift their sound and tempo. ‘Norway’ has the chaste whisper of a Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac track whilst ‘Silver Soul’ sees the pair replace lullabies with anthems of helplessness and despair: ‘It is happening again!’ ‘Used to Be’ is an update on the 7-inch released last winter, a strong redraft of an already fine song. The simplicity of that tender 4/4 kick suits Beach House well. It’s inviting rather than blasé.

‘Real Love’ will please lovers of Devotion the most, with a sense of longing that Legrand pushes further than anywhere else on Teen Dream. Scally and Legrand step away from the electronic encroachments on their droning, analogue sound, with Legrand playing piano ivories like a strong wind through leaves. ‘I met you somewhere/in an air beneath the stairs,’ she wails, and it’s here that this record finally sits itself down next to you. Not unlike Merriweather Post Pavilion or Veckatimest, Teen Dream might be overcooked by talking heads, but in time, even a year or two, this record will meet you again. You may well be underneath the stairs.

Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 20 to 11

I said too little last time, no pictures as punishment (overruled):

20. Mt. Eerie - Lost Wisdom

Phil Elverum. We saw him in Tufnell Park. Had never been there before. Graeme bought two tickets and came down from Liverpool. It was a bleak October night. High Places supported, I bought 03/07 - 09/07 from Rob Barber and lost it somewhere on London Bridge as we whizzed into the river through slots in the bridge barriers. I bought Lost Wisdom from Phil Elverum. I didn't lose it. Graeme wished he'd brought a CD for Phil to sign. We got lost and walked over another bridge, towards the Tate. We scuffed our shoes like percussive instruments on the wet and mucky iron bridge.



19. Liars - Drum's Not Dead

Downloading music has its perils. You listen to a record only briefly through these dull computer speakers that hyperventilate at the presence of a bassline. That was August 2007. In June 2008 Liars played with Deerhunter and High Places in a theatre renovated by volunteers. Mostly students and recent graduates who aren't native Scousers. We got to the show early and a big van with a Czech plate was parked outside. Bradford Cox was crouched outside the doors of the venue smoking a cigarette and prodding an mp3 player with this finger. He wore black shades and seemed moody. A girl lulled around the entrance complaining of a stomach ache. High Places were soundchecking inside, loudly. We were the only non-band members there for a while.



18. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House

'The Knife' did the rounds on MTV2's 120 minutes. That was the way to find out about music. It's a song that has no real pull, just this looping melody that goes on and on. It does suck you down like the sand that swallows the band in the video. I found Yellow House in HMV in Liverpool and had no real interest in it for months. But there was an allure early on, perhaps the surprise of actually finding this record in that temporary store, in a city with poor record shops. This album performs something like mourning work. Listening to 'Little Brother' in an aeroplane over the clouds, a little dinky plane a speck below: 'My little brother will be born again.'



17. Beach House - Devotion

Sitting in Liverpool Lime Street, the train begins to pull away. On my mp3 player is an album I uploaded from John's computer. It has a picture of a man and a woman sitting around a table with a cake and candles. The music throbs a bit, matching the rhythm of the pendelino. It's a faintly sunny morning, a mist is dissolving in the fields. A woman is singing in a sometimes harsh whisper about astronauts, Turtle Island, by the dark of the park. I will wait for you there weeping silently.




16. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

September 2007. Back in Liverpool, desperate to be there. Screaming 'YATZAH YATZAH' along with Avey Tare to that opening track. Now it's November, fireworks night is a shocker. Sefton Park is full of people, a mass of dark shapes, an amorphous squelching mass. You play up, and you play up for months to come. November in the North, a trench. A while later I'm lying in bed one evening: 'At the end of the day/when no one else is looking'. Chores gets you out of it.



15. The Decemberists - Picaresque

You send me SMS after SMS about the Decemberists. I'm not talking to you to try and be cruel. It works. You quote 'Angels and Angles', I don't care. You have ingrained in me an interest in this band. I do a Homer Simpson and give Picaresque to a family member as a Christmas present. She hates Colin Meloy's voice. 'Can I borrow it?' 'Oh, take it, please.' The Engine Driver, We Both Go Down Together. On The Bus Mall is haunting. And months later I put it on the stereo and look at you while it plays. It's not you. It's the song. And you've got your own back, again.



14. Jens Lekman - Oh, You're So Silent Jens

November 2007, Manchester. They actually have this in HMV? I pick it up. I'm telling you, you should listen to this record. Like fuck do you. You listen to Cat Power, and even then you barely listen to her. You won't be borrowing this one. Jens Lekman becomes a limb. Maple Leaves, Rocky Dennis's Farewell Song, I Saw Her at the Anti-War Demonstration. Jens taught me to sing. He taught me how to forget about you.



13. Gas - Nah Und Fern

I am yet to read a satisfying written account of this music.







12. Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans

Going to classes at 9am, sleeping at midday. Enduring sleep paralysis, throwing my shoulders upwards, breaking the hold. She was cleaning her bedroom and my stereo came on. Seven Swans was in the CD player. It was a numinous experience, she said, sitting on her windowsill with a dusty cloth in her hand. 'I can see a lot of light in you/and I think that dress looks nice on you.'



11. Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline

When I put this CD on, a grave sense of relief came over me. This is the music I have been looking for, I thought. I said it to you later. But when you do find that music, you know it's a death knell of sorts. Those feelings are rare. And maybe that's why I download so much from blogs, anything that I can. It's the sense of discovery that pervades all walks of life, that nomadic longing. But I have settled down somewhat with music, and whenever I settle down to this record it posits me somewhere else entirely. It is meditative. I am utterly reassured about existence with this music rising and falling against my ear, drifting off and coming back.