eMusic Review 0
Beach House is a lovely, unassuming straight pop record played as drone by Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand, two nice folks from Baltimore. On a strictly aesthetic level, Beach House fits neatly into the well-heeled drone/dream-pop lineage, from "I'm Only Sleeping" to the Byrds circa 1967-68 to The Velvet Underground to My Bloody Valentine to Mazzy Star to Fennesz to some kid's bedroom in suburban Florida's well-mulched cul-de-sacs.
Drone/dream-pop/space-rock/whatever you wanna call it is a defiantly middle-class music: a quaint, privileged rebellion against the blacks and whites of the day-to-day bustle, against the expectations of parents, responsibility and life, a longing stare into a safer and softer version of this spinning orb, a space without hardened edges, lights, opinions or ends. With its meditative pauses (it's all pause, really), it's basically the musical equivalent of that post-high school year in Europe, only rather than self-discovery in a German youth hostel, it's salvation through the hum of an EBow.
What's truly wonderful about Beach House, then, is how fully Scally and Legrand embrace their own class. Whereas many records bearing these same hazy production touchstones shroud themselves in filters of soft white noise and an allergic reaction to melody — perhaps… read more »
