Monday , November 16, 2009

Soundtracks: Beach House

beachhouseCD.jpg
Some music you just fall in love with: there's something about musical insta-love in which someone just blissfully sinks into a gorgeous drift of sound, turning the listener into a dreamer who imagines far-off lands or a life removed from the detritus and boringness of everyday life. The trick with the music of the deftly-named Beach House, though, is how it takes the everyday and makes it really beautiful. Beach House, a duo from Baltimore, make music that sounds almost exactly what the name evokes: it's equal parts 70s Californiana, psychedelic shoegazer, gothic starlit folk not unlike Opal or Mazzy Star, and a pop sensibility bubbling up through the Velvet-y gauzy layers of sound. But with songs like "Auburn and Ivory," singer Victoria Legrand's voice has a strength and heft that hints at a more dynamic range that Beach House could be capable of; the effect is like a sheet of sunshine pouring through a clouded window. It's the sort of moment when pretty turns into slightly disquieting, and it's this veiled eccentricity that makes the band more than just pretty noisemakers. (Their self-titled debut is out now on Carpark Records.)

beachhouse.jpg

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