La Belle et La Beache – Beach House @ Bell House
There was an air of significance before Beach House‘s show at the Bell House last night that carried the weight of the sold out crowd’s collective excitement for the official release of the new album, Teen Dream. But thanks to the rusty spigot that we call the internet, there was no suspense as to whether Teen Dream could compare to Beach House’s previous two albums; it’s already garnered near universal praise, and a good portion of the audience already knew the songs well enough to ‚”ah-ah-ah” along with front woman Victoria Legrand’s breathy hooks.
The Bell House show caught Beach House poised on the brink of what will inevitably be broader success with audiences outside of the indie circles that have made them as popular as they are. And thus the crowd’s anticipation wasn’t just of seeing what Beach House had already done, but rather of learning just how far Teen Dream will propel them.
Beach House released their 2006 self-titled debut with their distinct sound already intact — a plodding, buzzing, keyboard, a sparse lead guitar that slides and echoes accents and hooks from open to close, and haunting female vocals courtesy of Mrs. Legrand.
By 2008, with their second album Devotion, the intimate bedroom-style lo-fi was gone, replaced by a cavernous and clean reverb that makes the songs sound like they are bouncing off of clean, white walls as they slowly progress from one minor chord to the next. The effect is devastating and desolate (in the best possible way, if you’re the type of person who wants to slip on headphones and disappear into the cavernous sound). So what happens when a band that is attuned to the lonely ballad starts to sound more confident while they do it? Good things. The things of which Teen Dream are made.
Before opening act Jana Hunter had even started her set, the space directly in front of the stage was packed, but not with fans. Squeezed in shoulder to shoulder were bloggers and photojournalists, their bulky zoom lenses extending past the monitors on stage. Jana played a fairly short set that showcased her brand of subdued rock. Due to the levels during the performance, her understated croon blended with the fuzzy guitars in an altogether too-quiet manner. When a song’s feeling is conveyed not with a pronounced melody but rather its timber, to be properly appreciated it should be loud enough to be felt, and based on how chatty the crowd was during the set, that effect was nil.
Beach House’s performance was elegant, masterful, and seductive. The way Victoria Legrand moves her mouth when she sings is sex. The meticulous arrangements that give Teen Dream such a dynamic presence were fully and beautifully displayed by Legrand, guitarist Alex Scally, and a drummer whose presence made the percussion significantly more pronounced than the vacuous drum machine that he replaced. A few songs into the set, Scally asked for his vocals be turned up, which made his surprisingly strong voice more prominent. What I assumed on the record to be multiple tracks of Legrand’s voice may, upon future, more discerning listens, be Scally whose clear upper register yielded complex, pitch-perfect harmonies live.
Beach House only dipped into their back catalog briefly to play the ‚”hits” from Devotion: ‘Gila’ and ‘Heart of Chambers’. ‘Gila’ sounded gorgeous. It was alternately ceremonial and sensual; a single, stately light focused on Legrand accentuated the churchiness of the organ’s tone, and the five, fuzzy, white, mushroom capped lights with their throbbing red tips appeared increasingly phallic as her sheer sexiness dawned on me. When ‘Gila’ was over, Legrand complained that the band was ‚”tired” of playing their old songs. And then it hit me. The pokey pace of Gila? The hollow, scarcity of their early work? These songs were always tired sounding. It’s true — I came to enjoy their dreariness, but it was initially off-putting, and it’s hardly Beach House’s most attractive asset. Teen Dream has a driving force behind it that Devotion and Beach House lack, and the performance at The Bell House showcased it. The passion and energy that a human drummer brings enlivens the moroseness that Beach House does so well and turns their unique sound into a one that doesn’t require intense listening to invoke more than a tepid response.
So, yeah, Beach House is going to be huge (or, huger, depending on how insular your tastes are). Just last week they made their network television debut on Jimmy Fallon with the new fave, Teen Dream’s opening track, ‘Zebra.’ The crowd’s excitement was a response to its sensing the shifting wind. By this time next year, everyone who was at The Bell House will probably feel justified saying, ‚”yeah, I saw Beach House when they were still playing small venues.”
Beach House – Silver Soul
