Beach House make it sound so easy. The Baltimore duo have yet to release a bad song, and their core sonic blueprint — Victoria Legrand's sonorous vocals and purring organ, Alex Scally's twinkling guitars — seems bulletproof. But as anyone who has tried it knows, songwriting is far from easy, so Beach House's consistent brilliance is truly remarkable.
Their seventh album keeps their streak alive. It almost goes without saying that this isn't a radical reinvention — if you're looking for curveballs, you've come to the wrong band. Rather, Beach House continue to explore new crannies of their familiar dream pop sound, occasionally highlighting a new aspect of their style without ever changing it completely. The pitch-warped synths of "Lemon Glow" capture the band at their trippiest, while "L'Inconnue" layers Legrand's reverb-soaked vocals like a church hymnal, and hypnotic seven-minute closer "Last Ride" is led by an uncharacteristically sparse piano figure.
Minor evolutions aside, there's not a whole lot to set 7 apart from the six albums that preceded it, making it easy to see this as just another Beach House album. Don't take them for granted, since it's hard to think of another band that has delivered so reliably for this long.
(Sub Pop)Their seventh album keeps their streak alive. It almost goes without saying that this isn't a radical reinvention — if you're looking for curveballs, you've come to the wrong band. Rather, Beach House continue to explore new crannies of their familiar dream pop sound, occasionally highlighting a new aspect of their style without ever changing it completely. The pitch-warped synths of "Lemon Glow" capture the band at their trippiest, while "L'Inconnue" layers Legrand's reverb-soaked vocals like a church hymnal, and hypnotic seven-minute closer "Last Ride" is led by an uncharacteristically sparse piano figure.
Minor evolutions aside, there's not a whole lot to set 7 apart from the six albums that preceded it, making it easy to see this as just another Beach House album. Don't take them for granted, since it's hard to think of another band that has delivered so reliably for this long.