Beach House on Myspace

MP3: Gila

Video: Gila

Video: Heart Of Chambers

Video: You Came To Me

Video: The Black Cab Sessions

Mistletone proudly presents the first ever Australian tour by Beach House, the Baltimore duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally.

A devoted cult has sprung up around Beach House following their two gorgeously dark dreampop albums, Beach House and Devotion. Beach House’s live performances create an intense and otherworldy space with organs, slide guitars, reverb, harmony, layers, echoes and melodies and Victoria’s extraordinary voice and presence. As a special treat for Australian audiences, the Beach House duo will be accompanied by drummer and percussionist Dave Bergander of Baltimore art-rockers Celebration.

Intimate and warm, sensual and hazy, the dreamlike magic and compelling beauty of Beach House provide the surefire antidote to the winter blues. Tickets on sale now.

BEACH HOUSE TOUR DATES
Wed Aug 20: Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney with Bachelorette (NZ) + Rand and Holland.
* SOLD OUT!
Thu Aug 21: Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney with Bachelorette (NZ) + Songs.
Tickets $25 + BF on sale through Moshtix - phone: 1300 438 849 and all Moshtix outlets
Fri Aug 22: Winter Tones @ Roxanne, Melbourne. * SELLING FAST!
Tickets $26 + BF on sale through Moshtix - phone: 1300 438 849 and all Moshtix outlets
Sat Aug 23: The Troubadour, Brisbane with Bachelorette (NZ) + The Rational Academy.
Tickets $25 + BF on sale through Oztix.
Sun Aug 24: Mojos, Perth with Astral Travel, The Tigers + Fabulous Diamonds.
Tickets $25 + BF on sale through Moshtix - phone: 1300 438 849 and all Moshtix outlets
Wed Aug 27: The Toff In Town, Melbourne with Fabulous Diamonds + ii + DJ Scraps.
* SOLD OUT!
Fri Aug 29: Bar Bodega, Wellington, New Zealand with Bachelorette + Nikky Brinkman. Tickets $30 + BF on sale from Real Groovy.
Sat Aug 30: The Kings Arms, Auckland, New Zealand with Bachelorette + Noriko. Tickets $30 + BF on sale from Real Groovy.

PRAISE for DEVOTION by BEACH HOUSE

“The magic continues… a unique musical personality where dream-pop meets lyrics of tender optimism” - The Australian (four stars)

“Afloat on analog organ chords, wispy slide-guitar parts and a submerged drum-machine, their music fits that Sunday-morning archetype; slow, syrupy sounds adrift in that opiate haze familiar from classic comedown acts such as Opal, Mazzy Star and Nico” - The Age (four stars)

“Hazy, dreamlike… shimmering and spacious” - mX (four stars)

“A magical edge and a penchant for whimsy and storytelling” - Rave (four and a half stars)

“Effortlessly beautiful” - Beat

“Officially brilliant” - VICE magazine (Best Album of the Month)

Cyclic Defrost interview:

Beach House interview by Renae Mason

“You know how it is my friend,
In the boxes of those picture frames
Lay your head in the apple orchard,
You can settle down.”
- ‘Apple Orchard’, Beach House

‘Apple Orchard’ was an important song for Beach House. Its loveliness seduced listeners all over the world, when it made it onto Pitchfork’s Infinite Mixtape #34, and when it was rated as the website’s eighth best song for 2006. Multi-instrumentalist Alex Scully, and Victoria Legrand, singer, songwriter and organ mistress extraordinaire, explain this was the moment of their first break, when international recognition began.

The duo are based in Baltimore, USA, a small-scale town that’s got a lot going for it. Prices are low, venues are small, gigs are intimate and the crowd is welcoming. Now that crowd is growing. A quick look around on the internet reveals some very interesting commentary from fans and critics alike. One listener obviously can’t get enough, describing their experience of ‘Apple Orchard’ with eccentric colour: “It’s like eating a sunbeam with your ears, it’s like having honey drip over your internal organs, this song is so great.” Victoria is instantly taken aback as I read her this touching tribute. “I’ve never heard anything like that before! That’s really neat, it means that the words are having an effect on people’s imagination. That’s just going to breed more weird stuff!” she says with a chuckle. “Our Myspace page says, ‘visual/visual/visual’. That’s not a joke, it’s very real. We want our music to feel intense like syrup, very visceral.”

This is the Beach House open invitation, a musical mise-en-scene waiting to happen every time you hit play. A quick gaze at the cover art speaks volumes about what to expect from the disc inside. For their introductory album, it’s a close-up of what could easily be your grandmother’s jewelry box, bursting forth precious pearls, giant cubic zirconias and age-tarnished chains, all from another era when keepsakes were not just disposable commodities, but something precious to be handed down for all time. It’s not surprising then that it’s Victoria’s set of vintage organs, keys and pianos that create the starting point for songs. They are integral to the grain of the music, carrying the weight of her heavy-hearted dulcet tones, on the back of dense, textural-tinged melodies, with that special warmth of character that is unique to old analogue instruments.

As she sings (occasionally Alex does too), Victoria summons fragments of old memories blended with the new beginnings of tales not yet told. The inspiration comes “from the music itself,” she says. “From the chords that ring in the ears and a lot of visuals… I’m not sure exactly where they are coming from!” she admits. It’s almost like a special talent for synaesthesia. These are personal stories, accessible to all who care to bring their own imaginings to the songs, to make of them what they will.

This process of dialogue between the original intent of the songs and how listeners perceive them is something of great joy to them. A listener once heard, “I want to picture the nature” instead of “I want your picture but not your words” in the song ‘Master of None’,” Victoria recalls. It’s “a happy mistake,” she says, that sometimes when you think you are hearing something correctly (even though you’re not) this can be when you hear it best. To this effect, she gives a comic Manfred Man rendition: “Blinded by the light! Revved up like a deeeeuce!!!” I mean, what’s a deuce? Or is it a douche (as it is often, and absurdly, heard). Mondegreens [mishearings of song lyrics] are funny and Victoria is now chuckling down the phone. I get the impression that as long as the words have some positive meaning to Beach House listeners then that’s really all that matters to them.

There are other things Victoria is less light-hearted about, though, such as the fundamental assumptions that have been made about how Beach House create their beats. Most critics assume it’s the work of a drum machine and have reported this in their reviews. It upsets Victoria, as drum machines are not something she’s into. “I’ve been in bands that use drum machines before. It’s so different, very synthetic.” Beach House is not into precise, complex programming of beats but choose instead to work with the beats that are available on their organs and Yamaha keyboard. Sounds that are much more compatible with their warm, handmade aesthetic. For Beach House, the drum sounds certainly have their place but are far from elaborate. Instead it’s more like a subtle heartbeat that propels the song forward.

There’s also another good reason for the choices they make - there are only two pairs of hands in the band and this has a great influence on their style. It encourages processes to remain simple but harmonious and allows them to get away with doing things like recording the entire first album in their basement. Going on tour does present some challenges, however, like how to travel with an organ from 1973. This is circumnavigated, mainly, by taking along the keyboard instead in some instances, and making do with a minimal set of musical props at best. With the release of their new album Devotion, this is about to change. They are looking forward to a bigger performance with a guest percussionist joining to help create the little accents that will allow for something a little closer to their studio sound. The tour will take the band through the US, Canada, Europe and possibly Japan if all goes well.

Beach House are expected to grace our Australian shores in August this year, and Alex in particular, is really looking forward to this visit as it will indulge his other great passion - rocks. When asked what he likes to do in his spare time, he self-deprecatingly replies, “Mostly just reading books and watching movies…oh, and collecting rocks in a kinda pathetic way.” He explains further, “I studied a geology major at university, because who would think you can make pop music for a living?” The conversation then turns to the inevitable, one of the biggest rocks in the world. There’s a bashful and dare I say almost loving tone to Alex’s voice as he describes the stripes down the side of Uluru, the mammoth rock that demarcates Australia’s central heartland.

As the interview is winding up it’s a relief to note that, despite their growing recognition, Alex and Victoria seem very relaxed and are a pleasure to talk to. There’s not even a faint trace of rock star airs. I decide to sneak in one last question about something that has fascinated me about the letters that spell out the name of the band and the title of the album on the cover for Devotion. They’re laid out on a table at which Alex and Victoria are seated, facing each other with empty plates and what looks like a one-tiered wedding cake in the middle. “Are the letters made of dough?” Because that would be really neat. Victoria laughs, “No, no… They’re actually made of wood, but I should tell everyone that the entire table is made out of cake!” The conversation ends with Victoria admitting she’d be the chocolate mousse, or maybe even, no most definitely, the fruit cake.

From Inpress magazine:

The Australian newspaper review (four stars):

The Age newspaper review (four stars):

Built on the seaport shores of Baltimore, Beach House were never going to be particularly sunny, the duo’s eerie ocean fog-ensconced music giving their name irony. Afloat on analog organ chords, wispy slide-guitar parts and a submerged drum-machine, their music fits that Sunday-morning archetype; slow, syrupy sounds adrift in that opiate haze familiar from classic comedown acts such as Opal, Mazzy Star and Nico.

Victoria Legrand’s voice often evokes Nico: pitched deep and swimming amid her keyboard’s lapping waves. On their maiden voyage - the self-titled 2006 Beach House - Legrand and band mate Alex Scally pretty much floated along in their new musical vessel. Their second record, Devotion, discovers a sense of stability. Here, Beach House show control and purpose, the duo in command as they move into more tuneful, dramatic territory. And Legrand’s voice leads the way; the rousing Heart of Chambers finding her hitting new heights, figurative and literal.

- Anthony Carew

VICE magazine (Best Album of the Month):

I was a bit scared that this wasn’t going to match up to their first album (which I love so much) but it does. Thank fuck for that! Officially brilliant. Perfect in the morning, perfect at night. Great on headphones, great quietly going in the background. Wonderful when you’re alone pondering your life, even better to hold hands to. Aaaaawwww.

(10 out of 10)

mX newspaper review:

Beat review:

BEACH HOUSE – Devotion

(Mistletone)

Rave Magazine Brisbane

High quality organic produce…

There aren’t many bands whose music boosts the room temperature as much as this Baltimore duo, and since 2006’s self-titled debut, they’ve expanded their palette with a few more shades of sultry and a whole heap of different tones. Building spooky, moody ballads with ancient organs in an old barn/recording studio, Beach House don’t sound like anyone else, even if there’s an old-American feel and a creepy undercurrent of danger running beneath. The opening track Wedding Bells starts off all medieval with harpsichords, only to open up for some positively devastating distorted guitars, ringing in clearer and more direct than ever on this well-recorded second album. But my favourite is the third track, Gila, which starts off with those guitars (though a little easier on the distortion), followed by organs that disarm with a strange and simple pulsation, all full and warm and glowing with vibrato. But that chorus! Sheesh. And it just keeps coming, especially elsewhere on the record. There’s less of the lo-fi organ glaze that made their self-titled debut so amazing, but this time there’s more focus on the song (not that they needed any work in this department) and lyrics, particularly in terms of imagery. It still exudes atmosphere like the hottest summer day and sounds just as hazy as that day fading into the evening. Even if the essence of these songs is undeniably dark, there’s a magical edge and a penchant for whimsy and storytelling that is even more realized than their debut. I don’t know how they build so much momentum with such a slow-paced drum machine plodding along, but there’s a strong drive to their drugged out balladry, oozing an amazingly realized aesthetic along with a denseness of song that is hard to find anywhere else.

****½

RICHARD MACFARLANE

From The Brag, Sydney:

Changing the Temperature with Music
by Richard MacFarlane

Beach House came from nowhere for me. Their self-titled record had a sound enchanting enough even knowing the biography of the band, but upon first listen, I yearned to know how it was made and where it came from. Beach House is made up of Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand. Both compose and write together, though Victoria does the singing; her voice, beautiful and hazy atop lo-fi organs, drum beats, is narcotic, hypnotizing. They’re from Baltimore, a place that Alex describes as “a forgotten US city”. He says “people don’t even think of it as a destination whatsoever. I don’t think there’s any tourism here at all. People think of it as this horrible place, but I think it’s a place that doesn’t have so many yuppies and there are still lots of cool people around. There are authentic things; everything hasn’t just become a cheesy version of itself”.

Theirs is a warm sound, dreamy, balmy and best suited to night times with no breeze, or in late afternoon sun that illuminates pollen and seeds that sit stagnantly in the light. It’s one of the most unique sounding albums I’ve heard in a really long time. It’s their ideas, I think, and the way they execute them. Beach House use a lot of organs of differing ages and qualities; they have a lot of choice in terms of which sound to use where. It’s about finding a sound that they like. Listening to their record, it’s clear they’re meticulous about these choices. For Alex, the way things are recorded exposes a lot of intricacies and choices.

“That’s the most important thing to me at the moment. Someone could be playing something really interested on an instrument but if it’s recorded the wrong way, it doesn’t sound good; the life is taken out of it. Texture is so important because texture is often about how a sound is captured. There’s a lot that can happen in the process. One problem for me with music today, is that everybody’s using the same instruments, and the same way of recording them. Guitar sounds just like guitar on everybody’s recordings. But there are so many different sounds that instruments can have, there are a million things you can do to change the sound of your instrument but not many people care to do it. People get really confined by the conventions.

“For us, it’s about finding a sound that we like. We have a lot of different organs of different ages and qualities. Writing songs, we need different sounds for them, to match the melodies and chords, we try to find the one that suits them best.”

They say no to genres, especially the word folktronica. In doing so, the sound they’ve created is warm, dreamlike, otherworldly. Those are probably the sort of lame music writerisms that Beach House would hope to avoid, but it’s about escapism, looking elsewhere, fantasy.

“Some people’s music is really political, there are always different things that music does for people. For us, it’s primarily an escape. It’s like, a world that’s beautiful that we try to create. The notion of the otherworldly, I think, that’s a part of our taste, and our taste is what defines the music we make”.

There are photos on the inside of the album of Alex and Victoria lit by a strange post-storm sort of light, all dressed up, Victoria in a beautifully garish blue dress, Alex in black, their clothes and hair blowing in a breeze. There’s a hint of theatricality in their pose, but it’s also kind of eerie. This seems to capture their aesthetic nicely.

I’ve only listened to it in summertime and its perfect, possibly because Alex and Victoria started playing together in the same season.

“It was really, really hot. I think that heat had a lot to do with how we formed.
A friend of theirs made a video for “Master of None” and I love it, even though it’s totally at odds with the way the song sounds.

“It was recorded in our basement, the same one where we recorded the album. We built a set and had lots of our friends come over, our friend filmed it.. We staged various party scenes, and everyone got kind of really drunk, too, so it sort of just came naturally. We were going overboard, too. Just trying to be really silly, trying to make it gaudy, you know, a gaudy socialite sort of thing”.

The duo’s live shows are played mainly in music venues. Alex said that he’s “not exactly sure what the venues are like in Australia, but here, it’s usually a music venue, with a capacity of like 200 people or so. Every once in a while it will be in a bar, but it’s mainly in music-orientated places.

“It’s very quiet at our shows. We both sit down on stage, and I guess its very peaceful. No ones ever moving around; a lot of people sit down, actually, when we play. It sounds very similar to the record. We recorded the album live in the basement. I mean, our shows are probably slightly different every night, but our songs are very composed from start to finish. We don’t really change them”.

From VICE magazine Australia:

LABELS SHMABELS: Beach House defy genre
by HANNAH BROOKS

Visit Beach House’s MySpace page and two things immediately become clear: they don’t use drum machines and they don’t like labels. Especially gaylord ones like “folktronica”. Beach House, aka Baltimoreans Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand, give a shit about labels as much as they’re likely to give coins to a smackie. What they care about is making amazing, organ-heavy music that floors you quicker than a hit from your older brother’s bong. Their debut, self-titled album is getting kudos everywhere, from our glorious shores to Pitchfork land, who placed the album at number 16 in their top 50 albums of 2006. Back from his first US tour, Alex has plenty to be chuffed about but he’s still got time to chat about his love of corduroy and his 70s look.

Vice: So drum machines don’t tickle your fancy?
Alex: As soon as the record came out all these reviews were saying that we use drum machines. We don’t. Drum machines, for us, represent this whole realm of music that has had no influence on us and we don’t like at all. I guess the reason people mention it is because our music’s got the same repetitive beat over and over again.

Aside from the drum machine thing people have also called you lame-ass names like “Folktronica”.
Yeah, someone called it that. I understand why people use genres; sometimes people need more, they can’t just listen to the music. I think that the use of genres has just gotten totally out of control.

How would you describe your music then?
It’s melody based music. All our songs are pretty different but the thing that unifies them is that they’re all based on melodies..that’s the focus and then we build it up around them.

You were raised and still live in Baltimore. What’s with the town’s crazy mottos like “The City That Reads” and the new one “The Greatest City in America”?
Baltimore had really, really bad illiteracy rates so the theory was that if they said it enough everyone would start reading. Then this new mayor came into office and he changed the slogan to “The Greatest City in America”, which was really funny cause it was such an insane claim to make.

Your band photos are great and you both look pretty stylish. Most bands hate talking about fashion and pretend they don’t give a shit. Do you?
We definitely do. Those photos are just an exaggerated version of how Victoria and I dress. We didn’t want to just have band pictures that were, like, people against a wall..it’s so boring.

What do everyday Baltimoreans wear?
It’s a post-industrial city, very impoverished. It’s not like New York..there’s no fashion scene or anything. It’s slowly becoming gentrified but those people are real bland. They wear clothes from the mall.

Where do you shop?
I don’t really like any clothes that are new so I get all my clothes from the thrift store. Most of my friends do too. That’s the fashion of what I consider the people that really matter today. People are creating amazing styles that are really unique and brilliant. You can do amazing things to your appearance.

What’s your fave stuff?
I really like dark colours. I love boots, I definitely like bigger collars and I like corduroy. I have corduroy pants, a vest and a corduroy coat. I corduroy everything. My friend in New York who’s a fashion person says that 1970s is my sort of look. I like clothes.

The Age newspaper review for Beach House (four stars):

The ethereal self-titled debut from boy-girl Baltimore twosome Beach House hovers low and thick like an afternoon sea mist. The creative product of two lifelong friends - singer-organist Victoria Legrand and guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Alex Scally - their first long-player echoes with the kind of blissful, stoned pop sensibilities and rare, melancholic restraint that recalls Mazzy Star, mid-career Yo La Tengo and Slowdive. It’s a simple, spare and evocative recipe.
Pairing stunning, organ-scored melodies with Legrand’s wondrous vocal timing and modulation, Beach House fill out the most skeletal of song structures with an array of haze-drenched musical dynamics. Heavily reverbed guitars, antique drum-machine beats and ghostly echoes rest in and around an intoxicating plait of layered harmonies and lovelorn thematics.
From hymnal opener Saltwater and the mournful organs of Apple Orchard, to the haunting waltz of Auburn and Ivory, the record proves rich in noteworthy moments. Master of None, though, is the revelation, with Legrand’s withdrawn sass and lilting intonation flicking and striking along a dense, groove-based melody with the calmest of aplomb. This is narcotic, summertime pop at its rawest of rudiments. - Dan Rule

From Cyclic Defrost magazine:
It’s an incredibly delayed reaction, the simple drum machine beats take forever lost in a narcotic haze, so that when the impossibly slowed beats come all you can do is gently loll your head in acknowledgement. The bliss filled angelic female vocals are large bodied, reverb soaked, not necessarily disinterested but somehow distant. They sound like they were recorded in a hall, whilst the rest of the album was recorded somewhere else .. perhaps someone’s lounge room, sometimes quite poorly at that. The instrumentation is sparse and simple, sometimes a little cute and dinky, other times relaxed, drawn out shoegazing seemingly without actually meaning to be. It’s organs keyboards, guitars and little else. The result is a certain stillness, a lost in the ether kind of feel, that taps into melancholy and alienation yet can also come across as either filled with new age love or Helter Skelter creepiness depending how you choose to read it. This Baltimore duo are at times reminiscent of Mazzy Star, capturing the mood of Red House Painters yet blanketing them in a hazy fog of reverbed echoes. It’s the drugged out canter of the tunes that is the main story here, it makes Beach House feel unique and affecting, the simplicity of the tunes coming across as emotional honesty. Whether it is genuine is or not is another matter, but this lack of certainty continues to make Beach House strangely compelling and breathless listening. - Bob Baker Fish

From The Australian newspaper (four stars):
THOUGH wielding a quiet power similar to bands such as Low and Mazzy Star, the songs created by this duo from Baltimore sound like neither of them. Beach House (Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand) have their own muse, and it’s languid, sunny and beautiful. Low-fi, yet dense with loops of junkyard sounds and waltzes from seaside carnivals, their fractured pop sensibility is formidable. With electronic currents and percussive rattles in the background, hazy keyboards and slide guitar take the lead to build slow swells of deliciously warm melody. Veining these are Legrand’s cool vocals, delivering lyrics such as “Love you all the time, even though you’re not mine” (Saltwater) with a celestial detachment and vampish cruelty. The band’s name is no throwaway. Beach House’s debut is the ideal soundtrack for hazy summertime romances, reflecting all the ecstasy and heartbreak such relationships entail. While some songs end just as they’re growing hypnotic, the consistent atmosphere ensures each dream simply morphs into another. - Sean Rabin