One Track Mind

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Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally are the sort of people who seem fated to have been musicians, or at least artists of some stripe. If you’ve listened to their first two albums as Beach House, it’s nigh impossible to imagine the native Baltimorians putting down their instruments and eking out a living as CPAs or dental hygienists. Thankfully for us, that isn’t the case, and after completing a rigorous tour schedule last winter the duo began working on the songs that would form their third LP, Teen Dream.

Scheduled for a January 26th release on Sub Pop, the new album was recorded over the course of a month this past spring in an abandoned church in upstate New York. Which makes us wonder two things: where do musicians find these cool, forgotten buildings (is there a special section on Craigslist?), and how does a band with such a distinctive sonic calling card continue to expand their sound so much from record to record?

“Norway” begins under a veil of normalcy, with a timid drum machine beat and some droning keyboard. Then comes the splash, a headfirst plunge of vocal coos and gleaming guitars as the band begins asserting their character. By the time the verse proper rolls around, the track starts to melt, its membranes breaking down, a druggy carousel ride with instruments detuning on the fly. It is a disconcerting effect at first but soon becomes just another of “Norway”’s many compelling facets. The choruses, by contrast, hearken back to that initial burst of glittering jangle and vocal counterpoint.

While a song like this allows the listener to point to some of Beach House’s largest influences (the spaciousness of Galaxie 500, the experimental bent of Broadcast), it makes it difficult to single out peers. There there really aren’t any other acts out there doing what Beach House does–and that’s one of the best compliments any band can hope to earn.