Beach House

All Music Guide:

Despite its summery name, Beach House creates music that is dark, dreamy, and alluringly hypnotic. Baltimore residents Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand (the niece of French composer Michel Legrand) formed the duo in 2005, with Legrand's hushed, Nico-like vocals and Scally's delicate instrumentation paving the way for their first batch of songs. Within a year, Beach House had charmed indie music enthusiasts across the blogosphere with its languid songcraft, and the eerie warmth of "Apple Orchard" landed on Pitchfork's Infinite Mixtape MP3 series in August 2006. Two months later, Beach House issued its eponymous debut album for Carpark. The band remained with the Carpark label for one additional album, 2008's Devotion, before graduating to Sub Pop and releasing Teen Dream in early 2010. The duo built on the acclaim of Teen Dream with 2012's Bloom, meticulously constructing a unified sound and vision meant to be experienced as an entire album rather than a collection of songs.

Wikipedia:

Beach House is a dream pop duo from Baltimore, Maryland, formed in 2004. The band consists of French-born Victoria Legrand and Baltimore native Alex Scally. Their self-titled debut album was released in 2006 to critical acclaim and has been followed by Devotion in 2008, Teen Dream in 2010, and Bloom in 2012.

History [edit]

Formation and Beach House [edit]

Guitarist Alex Scally, and vocalist and organist Victoria Legrand formed the band in 2004, producing music composed largely of organ, programmed drums, and slide guitar. In an interview Pitchfork Media, LeGrand addressed their unique two member status; "[I]t's a way to challenge ourselves: What do you do when it's just the two of you... [O]ne of the reasons this has been such a fulfilling experience for me is that with two people, it's so much easier to achieve things that feel exciting and new."

The song "Apple Orchard" was featured on a Pitchfork Media MP3 mixtape in August 2006. In October 2006 the band's self-titled debut album, Beach House, was released through Carpark Records. That year, Pitchfork Media ranked it 16th on its Best Albums list.

Devotion and other projects [edit]

Beach House's second album, Devotion, was released on February 26, 2008. It was received with similar acclaim and was included in Pitchfork's Best Albums of 2008 list. On October 21, 2008, the group released the single "Used to Be".

Beach House also recorded a cover of Queen's "Play the Game" for the iTunes Store release of the Red Hot Organization's 2009 compilation, Dark Was The Night.

In 2009, Legrand provided backing vocals on the song "Two Weeks" by the indie rock band Grizzly Bear. She later collaborated with the band again by providing vocals to "Slow Life", the band's contribution to the soundtrack for the film Twilight: New Moon.

Teen Dream [edit]

Teen Dream, the duo's 'dynamic and intense' third album, was released on Sub Pop on January 26, 2010. The album was released in the UK by Bella Union and in Mexico by Arts & Crafts. It contains a newer version of their 2008 single "Used to Be". "Norway" was made available as a free download on the band's website on November 17, 2009; and promoted on iTunes as the Free Single of the Week starting January 12, 2010. The album was produced and engineered by Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Grizzly Bear). The album's unanimously good reviews have gained the band a much larger fan base, with Jay-Z and Beyoncé being spotted at the band's shows.

Teen Dream was listed as No. 5 on Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2010:

Bloom [edit]

On March 7, 2012 the band streamed a new song, "Myth", from their website. The album Bloom was released on May 15, 2012 via Sub Pop. A second song from the album, "Lazuli", was released on April 13, 2012. Beach House was featured on the cover of Issue #80 of the Fader. A music video for "Lazuli" was released on June 6, 2012, directed by Allen Cordell, who also directed the video for "Walk in the Park" from Teen Dream. A music video for the track "Wild" has also been released. A music video for "Wishes" directed by Eric Wareheim and starring Ray Wise was released on March 7, 2013.

Musical style and influences [edit]

Singer Victoria Legrand's vocals have often been compared to those of Nico. Some music outlets have also compared Legrand's vocals to 1980s psychedelic rock vocalist Kendra Smith of the band Opal. Guitarist Alex Scally plays a Fender Stratocaster guitar in an E♭ Tuning.

The group's influences include This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, The Zombies, Maximilian Hecker, Brian Wilson, Françoise Hardy, Neil Young, Big Star and Chris Bell. Another known influence is the 60's folk group Tony, Caro and John. Beach House re-recorded that band's "Snowdon Song", renamed it "Lovelier Girl", and released it on its self-titled album with no attribution. Initially, Tony Dore of Tony, Caro and John stated, "I haven't seen much yet in terms of royalties or acknowledgement of authorship". Several months later, however, Dore responded that discussions had taken place to apply proper attribution on re-releases of the Beach House debut.

Live performances [edit]

The band has toured extensively. In March 2009, the band was featured at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

In April 2010, the band performed at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California. In June 2010, the band surmounted "technical difficulties due to too much MDMA" while playing a set on The Park Stage at Glastonbury. In August 2010, the band joined Vampire Weekend on tour as one of their two opening acts, the other being the Dum Dum Girls. In October 2010, Beach House played at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. On December 20, 2010 the band performed on Conan.

The band was chosen by Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival they curated in May 2011, and also by Portishead to perform at the ATP I'll Be Your Mirror festival that they curated in July 2011 at London's Alexandra Palace. On May 29, 2011 the band played at the Sasquatch! Music Festival. On July 31, 2011 the band played at the Fuji Rock music festival in Niigata, Japan. On October 16, 2011, the band played at the Treasure Island Music Festival. On May 18, 2012, they appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and on Sunday July 15, 2012, they performed the closing set on the Red Stage during the Pitchfork Music Festival.

In May 2012, the band appeared on Later... with Jools Holland playing "Myth" and "Lazuli" from their 2012 album, Bloom. On July 26, 2012 they performed the Bloom cuts "Wild" and "Wishes" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.