Beach House

Among the many eighties revivals of the new millennium, dream-pop could hardly be left out. But let's be honest, it was a bet lost from the start. The feeling was that that season had already run its course, that it had all but entirely evaporated into the enchanted cloud of the masters Cocteau Twins. What was left to squeeze out of their otherworldly filigree, steeped in dissonance, echoes and reverb, out of those ethereal chants that Elizabeth Fraser's mesmeric voice sent soaring into ravishing celestial trajectories? Sure, there had been the shoegaze saga reinvigorating that ethereal sound with blankets of disorienting feedback, there had been the psych-pop experience of Mazzy Star transfiguring those lullabies into new, bewitching narcoleptic vertigo, or the lesson of bands like Mercury Rev and Sigur Rós, capable of updating rock – more or less "post" – with the dreamy suggestions of that unforgettable escape from reality. Nothing, however, that hinted at a real rebirth of dream-pop, at the establishment of a new benchmark capable of setting the rules across the whole varied musical galaxy of the 2000s. Which is precisely what the duo Victoria Legrand-Alex Scally managed to achieve, turning their Beach House into the outpost of a genuine resurrection of the genre.

Love at first sight

The story is well known: young Victoria Legrand, born in Paris but raised in Philadelphia – granddaughter of the illustrious French composer Michel Legrand and singer Christine Legrand – decides to leave the École Internationale de Théâtre "Jacques Lecoq", where she had gone back to earn her acting diploma, and follows her instinct across the ocean, toward the more modest and "affordable" Baltimore. Here she meets Alex Scally, an eccentric geology student who had in the meantime become a carpenter's apprentice, with whom she instantly clicks. The two hit it off from the very first moment, sharing the same passion for organs and vintage sounds. Shortly after, the Beach House formula is born: an intriguing, enveloping sound, acoustically shimmering. An anesthetic, persuasive flow of honeyed chords and drunken rhythms. The absence of preset directions leaves the two free from the burden of new commitments: the palette, in fact, is essentially made up of three elements: slide guitar, keyboard and programmed drums. With Scally indulging in reverbed echoes, loops and assorted electronic trickery.

Already the ace trio of their debut (the albums "Beach House", "Devotion" and "Teen Dream") showcases the pair's crystalline talent. But it's from their fourth record onward that the golden couple of new dream-pop "institutionalizes" their sound into a classic, unmistakable format. The backdrop is the black canvas studded with white lights of "Bloom" (2012), the ideal setting to nail down a definitive formula that would set the standard for the entire decade. The raw lo-fi of the debut gives way to softer, more polished textures, everything becomes more mature and refined. The sonic range also expands: no longer just a pile of vintage organs, but also layers of guitars, dense blankets of bass and rhythmic effects that are lush compared to the bedroom minimalism of the early experiments. A crystal cabinet of sounds in which the increasingly graceful and expressive performances of sweet Victoria shine, also the "visual" soul of the duo, with her theatrical and cinematic fascinations (David Lynch first and foremost).

The Myth era

Surprisingly recorded at Sonic Youth's own home, precisely at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Texas, and produced, like its predecessor, by Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tv On The Radio, Grizzly Bear), "Bloom" unleashes ten practically perfect tracks. Opening the dance is the single "Myth", posted on the band's website two months before the album's release, and it's magic right away: introduced by a sublime opening arpeggio and underpinned by a solid drum machine, Victoria's voice rises up powerful, unexpectedly lower in tone, sly and sensual, before gliding confidently into the high notes too, while the sound wraps around us, solemn and inexorable as a spider's web, amid dreamy reverb and shimmering flickers of chiming guitars, sweeping us away for good with its melodic opening, sublimated in a stunning instrumental passage for vintage keyboards. "What comes after this momentary bliss?", Legrand wonders, as if trying to freeze forever that feeling of peace, that soft glow that precedes the moment the sun disappears over the horizon. It's the perfect appetizer, as well as one of the duo's definitive masterpieces.

But the rest of the courses are no less impressive. Like the uninterrupted flow of a music box, the songs follow one another through dreamlike harmonic ascents and finely embroidered textures, tracing the fluorescent melodic lines skillfully laid out by arranger Scally, always adept at using his own tricks to ward off the danger of repetitiveness inherent to this kind of music.

In the spectacular carousel of "Bloom", the celestial atmospheres take on an even more absolute centrality, and every languid start is followed by an explosion of joy in which one's dreams can be cradled, without ever giving up the melancholic streak that pervades the whole record. In "Lazuli", for instance, Legrand's radiant contralto lights up the haze of hypnotic arpeggios, before a melodic shift paves the way for the long, opiated final coda; the organ progression, the vocal suspension and the heartbreaking melody of "Troublemaker" don't dispel the looming threat of a love story gone wrong; the epic "Wild" exhumes aching memories of teenage boredom and shattered families ("Our father won't come home/ 'Cause he is seeing double"); the nostalgia-soaked midtempo of "Wishes" ("The moment when a memory aches") lets its childlike innocence and yet another melodic marvel slip into a dark whirl of keyboards, without the trembling vocalizing of siren-Victoria managing to dissolve that lingering foggy patina of sadness.

Often it's the details – as much as the atmospheres – that make the songs: the impetuous drumming and subtle harmonic embroidery among the synths of the obsessive "New Year"; the insistent riff and plasticky drum machine of "The Hours"; the union of shoegaze and 70s classic rock in "Other People". Meanwhile the electric-piano-and-plucked-guitar lullaby of "On The Sea" and the lulling mantra of "Irene" – over 8 minutes in which the keyboard's extravagant melody both compensates for and underscores the sense of loss – signal at the close that the celebrations are about to end, and that it's time to open our eyes and return to reality and everyday life, in a sublime interlacing of veiled murmurs, soft acoustic spirals and warm rhythmic effusions. "It's a strange paradise", the final track concludes. And no one in the last twenty years has known how to tell that story like Beach House.

Metaphysics of Pop

Alex and Victoria still take refuge today in their seaside home, an unnatural, watercolored Eden, blurred by the light of a sun that dazzles but doesn't hide the unease and melancholy beneath the sand. A landscape brought vividly to life also through the found sounds masterfully woven into the tracks: the howl of the wind, birds chirping, cars speeding by, children whispering.

Continuing to build new variations on the theme is their (arduous) wager. Also because we're unlikely to ever see them tackle any Copernican sonic revolutions, as Scally's own words make clear: "I hate it when bands change from one record to the next, that's not how we work". And perhaps that's for the best.

"By every measure, Bloom's wingspan is wider than anything Beach House have done before", declares Pitchfork. And this time it's hard to disagree. The compositional and melodic peak of the Baltimore duo, "Bloom" is the album that regenerated an entire genre, giving it a new identity capable in turn of boasting the usual "countless attempts at imitation". Call it "metaphysical pop" if you like. A new canon destined to leave its mark – or rather, its dream – on an entire generation.

(Contributions by Giuliano Delli Paoli)

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26/09/2021