Beach House - Devotion
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CD Details
Artist: Beach HouseEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-02-26
Music Label: Carpark Records
Soundtracks:
- Wedding Bell
- You Came to Me
- Gila
- Turtle Island
- Holy Dances
- All the Year
- Heart of Chambers
- Some Things Last (A Long Time)
- Astronaut
- D.A.R.L.I.N.G.
- Home Again
Music reviews of Devotion
Music Review: Devotion
Rating: 5 Stars
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," as the old saying goes, and it continues to apply to so many bands who trip over though themselves in an attempt to improve the quality of their music. Thank heaven, , for the ones who don't pay attention to the cliché and surface with something greater than anyone could have expected. Last year, Burial dropped my jaw to the floor when he released Untrue--a record that was a thousand times better than his rock-solid eponymous debut. Burial picked up on a unique sound and saw it to its logical endpoint, but Untrue had the power to move you to awe and great swells of emotion, and you could live in it. And now, Beach House is finding itself in a similar scenario, in which the limitations of their seemingly faultless first record only become apparent after the quietly stunning Devotion eclipses it in nearly every way.
When the band's debut, Beach House, dropped in October 2006, it heightened our awareness of the current fall season. With only the sparest of parts--a guitar, a keyboard, a voice and a drum machine, recorded onto a four-track--the duo of Victoria Legrand ('01) and Alex Scally squeezed out fuzzy, creaky love songs that felt like being draped in a timeworn blanket or an elegant coat from long ago. It wasn't autumn as experienced outdoors, but autumn as viewed from the window of a living room covered in deep browns and faded yellows. On their second record, Beach House have opened up their sound, for lack of a better term, and given it room to breathe. The melodies are sweeter, the songs more compositionally complex, the sound--my goodness, that sound! No longer tied to a four-track, Beach House trades fuzz for a gossamer echo that's guaranteed to put a lump in your throat, and these uniformly wonderful songs resonate as clear as a bell. It wasn't that Beach House was inferior or less than mellifluous--perhaps just more closed-off than it could have been. On Devotion, Beach House lets you fully inside.
It's entirely possible to pass through Devotion without understanding a single word. I imagine that this is just fine with Legrand, since she mentioned in an interview with the Miscellany News that listeners should take her lyrics and create their own personally relevant dramas from them. Even without all of the vocals being clear, however, certain themes on Devotion reveal themselves through more unexpected avenues. The track titles refer to concepts like love ("You Came to Me," "D.A.R.L.I.N.G."), travel ("Turtle Island," "Astronaut,"), and celebration ("Wedding Bell," "Holy Dances"), and because these themes can be easily connected to each other, Devotion works fantastically well as a whole. The waltzing, swinging rhythms likewise seem to sweep you up and whisk you somewhere far away. Beach House understands and capitalizes on music's possibility as a transportive device; at its most evocative, Devotion can take you to places unknown, treasured or both.
Yes, Devotion really is that good. Beach House had exactly one knockout track, "Apple Orchard," that elevated the record beyond where it otherwise would have been. Their "Apple Orchard" this time out is "Holy Dances," Devotion's exotic and stupefyingly amazing centerpiece. Its melodies seem to be infused with cane sugar, and the way the toms and hand-bells slide from rhythm to rhythm with such effortless grace brings to mind a fluid, undulating body movement--halfway between a dance and a soft caress. "Astronaut" lives up to its title with its otherworldly, glimmering keyboards that shoot listeners into a crystalline solar system, as does "Wedding Bell," a celebratory song that--were it a half-step slower--would make the perfect wedding dance at the hippest reception in town. As for the other tracks on Devotion, well, you'll have to take my word that they're all freaking gorgeous--every single one of them.
And then there's the matter of Legrand's voice, possibly the most divisive constituent at the Beach House party. It's husky, and doesn't sound particularly feminine on its own, and the four-track recorder that the duo used on their debut didn't lend it very much allure. That's all behind us now. With Devotion's vastly higher fidelity and misty echo effect, Legrand is given the space to stretch herself and try out her surprisingly wide range, and she sounds, finally, like an angel. But the improvement also has to do with Legrand herself, how she's exponentially more confident and at times even extroverted (she nearly belts on "Wedding Bell"), as though Beach House were a merely a dry run for the real thing. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay her is that her voice doesn't seem to come from a human in a recording studio, but arises out of nature like a phenomenon too beautiful to comprehend.
For all the talk about changes, it's easy to forget that Beach House are largely sticking to what they've been doing all along. Two albums into their career, they're still recognizably themselves and haven't made much effort to shake up their winning formula. They haven't added any woodwinds or zithers or even a bassist, and beneath the guitars and keyboards ticks the steady pulse of that drum machine they've kept in tow, reinforcing the fact that this music is still being made by two people. Like Burial before them, what Beach House have actually done is zeroed in on a fantastic idea and nearly perfected it, while bearing the precious human connection in mind. Forget the old, sloppy comparisons to Mazzy Star and Nico; Beach House now sounds like Beach House and nobody else. Their love for what they do is apparent not only in what they say but in what they play, and it's their devotion to a sound, a mood, a texture, a lover, a fantasy, that places Devotion already among the best records of 2008.
Description of Devotion
Feeling lonely tonight? Turn off the TV and lower the lights. Baltimore duo Beach House have returned with their sophomore full length entitled Devotion. Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand have written eleven delicate pop tunes about love, feeling, and, of course, devotion. Their new album is a surefire antidote to the winter blues.Beach House have developed their craft exponentially since their 2006 self-titled debut. The recording is crisper; the songs are fuller. This is a band that is taking the pop duo format to the limit.
The organs, slide guitars and reverb are still there, but Beach House lay out some new sounds for their newest offering. While on their debut critics made comparisons to early 90s dream popsters like Mazzy Star, Galaxie 500 and Slowdive, on Devotion listeners will also hear the band's longtime admiration for 60s Motown and country folk.
Nothing much happens on the second album from this Baltimore, Maryland duo, but it all unfolds so beautifully you would be hard-pressed to complain. Using slow-motion rhythms, ghostly vocals and dreamy carnival organs in its attempt to pull together a set of vaporous melodies, the band comes up with a spellbinding collection of songs that in its best moments recalls the hazy wonder of dream-pop predecessors the Velvet Underground and Mazzy Star. Singer Victoria Legrand is the niece of famed soundtrack composer Michel, which could explain why so many of the songs--especially standouts like "D.A.R.L.I.N.G." and "Heart of Chambers"--have such a convincingly cinematic feel. Hopefully, the producers at HBO are listening. --Aidin Vaziri
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