So Necessary

While Rap and Hip-Hop make the oblique about-face plunge into a world of ring-tones and bad replicas, I’m reading Kanye’s blog & listening to Beach House. If anyone attended Ye’s “Glow In the Dark Tour” (I couldn’t), you’ll begin to see why Beach House is the new Daft Punk.

Hailing from now popular (The Wire/B-More) Baltimore, Beach House is Alex Scally on guitar/keyboards/wand and Victoria Legrand on vocals/pixie dust. Their most recent album is Devotion, out some months ago on Car Park records. Jizzed on by Pitchfork and everyone else involved, Devotion has received all the praise it’s worthy of.

When I got the record in February, I needed it. Barely surviving the seasonal depression on double-shots and drip, I longed for fall. How unfortunate it was when I forgot about Beach House. During my first listen, it washed over me like an autumn breeze, entirely forgettable

“Wedding Bells,” the opening track off the record, is perhaps the liveliest of the album’s 11-track collection and by far not my favorite. Capturing perfectly a pagan lesbian marriage on an October day in Vermont, Alex Scally’s lo-fi organ/guitar heavy productions create a sense of longing and at best fantasy.

"You Came To Me,” my favorite track, is like the other tracks: simple, even childish in melody. But the contrasts abound. Legrand’s voice, a smoked-Nico with a dash of old-man wisdom harnesses every song with phone-sex operator cadence and fairy-tale charm.

In a march of gothic melody and rain-drop kissed drum pads, the song begins with the words “Invite your sister/Into the garden/All cannot play/Fistfull of wildflowers/Handpicked by someone/Who nearly fell.” The verse is spoken with the haunting enchantment that will one day initiate me into the halls of Gryffindor.

Terrifying, soothing and confounding Legrand shapes Devotion into what hangs together as the creation of the Beach House world. Awkward band name aside, each succesive listen invites the listeners to be a part of that world and even make it their own. This is, like Hip-Hop and Folk music’s storytelling capabilites, a visceral connection as well as simple and visual. Maybe now my Kanye comparison makes more sense, probably not though.

There is no doubt that Devotion is a headphones album, at least at first. And not only headphones are required, but your best cup of sleepy-time tea and The Hobbit. While Legrand speaks nothing of the Shire or Hogwarts, I’d certainly like it if she did. On Beach House’s MySpace page, their genre descriptions are succesively, “Visual, Visual, Visual.” Since we still have to listen to them, I choose to do so with my eyes closed.

-Stefan Nickum