Beach House
Label: Carpark
Length: LP
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Beach House
The world as gently brush-stroked and dribbled out by Baltimore duo Beach House is a grandiose, fallen one. Victoria Legrand’s smoky, double-tracked vocals skate slowly over creeping, rainy-day matrices of nodding-off organ and silken slide guitar that threaten to fade into the shadows from whence they came at any given second. She’s Nico reincarnated, but with a higher register and without that imposing accent. There are impressions of forgotten epochs revisited, gowns tailored for fancy balls, snailing downtown cab rides, post-coital stasis. Tumbling from Legrand’s chanteuse lips are one restrictive morsel after another ‘ ‘You only give me what you don’t want no more,â?� ‘Child, your only hope has flown,â?� ‘Love you all the time/Even though you’re not mineâ?� ‘ eternally despairing amongst imagined ruins.
This article appears in Oct 4-10, 2006.