Initial Thoughts: Beach House- Teen Dream

The name Victoria Legrand has slowly crept up on us in 2009, despite Beach House not having released a single thing over the past twelve months. Her appearance with Grizzly Bear on the New Moon OST and her use of backing vocals in said band’s triumphant single of the year ‘Two Weeks‘ has helped give her voice an unmistakably factor so that the day you stumble across a Beach House song, you know you’ve heard her before and you know you must hear more. On ‘Teen Dream’ she takes up centre stage with vicious, husky tones sculpted into gloriously melodic hooks that help define what many expect to be Beach House’s true stepping stone into, shall we say, “hugeness”.

Already many are calling ‘Teen Dream’ an album of 2010. Considering we’re exactly 43 days away from 2010, this seems a little premature. But you can feel a similar wave of expectancy fluttering inquisitively around this record such as that which tagged itself onto the latest Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear albums. What the aforementioned two and Beach House have in common is their position as established artists, on the brink of achieving something really significant. Both Grizzly Bear and especially Animal Collective achieved just that over the past year – a step up. There’s no reason why this Baltimore two-piece can’t do the same.

‘Teen Dream’ is however, a far from instant classic. It delves into far more areas than 2007’s ‘Devotion’ did. That album had a coherent look and feel and it was it’s greatest strength and weakness at the same time. Beach House are a band made to delve and on their third record, they have the inevitable epiphany.

Much of this record isn’t as tender and soft on the ear as the band’s previous two offerings. But the courageous move to shift from simple dream pop into more experimental offerings is a rewarding one, as ‘Norway’ brushes up on stunning vocal loops and ‘10 Mile Stereo’ provides a heady, relentless pace with soaring synthetics and tap-tap beats. The highs of this record are unlike anything else on the band’s discography to date. Everything soars into the previously unknown as this ambitious collection of songs rewards you over time more than simply from the first eerie chorus.

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