Beach House: "Devotion"
Carpark Records, 2008
This sophomore release from Baltimore’s Beach House builds upon the dreamy, fairy tale cabaret sound of their eponymous debut.
Their sound is one that captures the mood of later summer nights reminiscing by candlelight away from any city or making beautiful new memories by moonlight that scarcely seem real even as they’re happening. There is something decidedly sentimental about this band’s music but it never waxes into self-parody.
Devotion’s combination of billowy keyboards and organs,
simple, gentle beats and occasionally gossamer guitar tones are reminiscent of
the mellowest of Galaxie 500 songs and just as lovely if utterly otherworldly.
Victoria Legrand’s deep, resonant voice is a surprisingly
strong presence for those new to the band but it too perfectly suits this music
that is all soft edges and impressionistic colorings. This entire album sounds
like it’s all but disconnected from the music happening in the greater world at
the moment and that’s one of it’s strengths as well—
there are no obvious touchstones and no trends that they’re
following, giving it a timeless quality.
Some might be put off by the obvious drum machine sound,
something the band doesn’t always use in the live setting, but it gives the
songs a tone of stability, inevitability and finality as though to suggest that
while sentimentalists can savor their memories, life keeps moving forward
whether we want it to or not.
Possibly the strongest song on this album is “Heart of
Chambers” with its gently strummed guitar accompaniment and soaring vocal
treatments from Legrand. It incandesces with a strength of emotion rare in what
can loosely be called indie rock and as it flickers to an end, you can
practically see the camera go unfocused on the images it conjures.
The Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston cover, “Some Things Last (A
Long Time),” is fairly faithful to the original from Johnston’s album 1990
but Beach House do the song justice with music to accent the song’s loving
overtones.
Beach House may not exactly set the world on fire with their
music but that’s not what they’re trying to do with this album. It’s
reflective, introspective music for people who can relate deeply to that
mindset in which the heart and the imagination are free to make designs of
their own of a beautiful world where things have their inherent value and
meaning separate from what the rest of the world might think of it.
To anyone who enjoys a good daydream, tranquility and the
time to let one’s heart swell with fond memories and hopes, secret and
otherwise, this record will sound just like what you’ve been looking for.
As a big artistic step forward for the band, Devotion
stands on its own but it also promises even grander designs from a band making
some of the most gorgeous music around.
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