It manages to sound familiar on first listen, like a long lost favourite album rediscovered
It manages to sound familiar on first listen, like a long lost favourite album rediscovered
(Bella Union)
Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally (the duo behind Beach House) have surely enjoyed the almost uniformly rave reviews for their Teen Dream album. The only downside must be that they are sick of reading that they are sick of reading the references to Galaxie 500 and Mazzy Star.
Such reference points, whilst fair, only tell part of the story. Essentially the album’s title tells you the essence of the album: these are dreamy pop songs filled with longing, hope, sadness and love. The feeling is that of a warm summer’s evening, warm and sticky, with the all the wonderful and frightening possibilities of the night. Wonderful as the songs are – and there’s not a dud amongst them – it is the album’s texture that is most appealing.
Drowsy and woozy, drums trundle away in the background, subsumed beneath layers of keyboards. As is the way of things at the moment, some of the keyboards stray slightly too close to 80s MOR for those that had to live through the decade the first time around. But this is really the only criticism that can be laid at Teen Dream’s door.
It manages to sound familiar on first listen, like a long lost favourite album rediscovered. Not because it obviously sounds like an album of long ago, but because the songs are so simple and so (pop) classical it is impossible to believe that you haven’t been listening to them for years. It’s great to hear a band truly find their sound. Beach House have.