Beach House Breakup: How I Finally Fell Out of Love with Legrand & Scally
October 2010
I wandered in my loneliness through falling autumn leaves in St. Louis, Missouri. My headphones were playing Teen Dream. I felt the heartbreak in Victoria Legrand’s voice as she sang “Walk in the Park”. I felt my own lost love in her lyrics.
Beach House – Walk in the Park – Special Presentation
Summer 2012
At the end of 2012, I had a nervous breakdown and left St. Louis, moving to stay with friends in Sacramento, California for half a year (2012-2013). Before this happened, during the summer of 2012, the soundtrack to my life was Bloom. Where I was descending into dark depths, Victoria Legrand & Alex Scally were expanding their sound into its most beautiful, blissful, euphoric realms, as suggested by the album’s name. While I struggled with my self-destructive, suicidal thoughts, Beach House was (as their band name reveals), a refuge for my troubles. The stunning, sublime soundscapes (Victoria Legrand’s carnival organ, Alex Scally’s guitar, and Joe Cueto’s viola a miniature orchestra conducting a waltz for the end of the world) and Victoria Legrand’s towering, turbulent vocals deeply haunted me. “On the Sea” is still my favorite Beach House song a decade later.
July 11, 2012
I experienced the band’s music live for the first time. I was hypnotized as the rhythms of Alex Scally’s guitar in “Irene” created a spectacular, spontaneous trance with the fire alarm in the building, triggered by the smoke from the stage. I met Victoria & Alex after the concert and learned that one of their desert island albums is also one of mine – Gene Clark’s cosmic masterpiece No Other.
Winter 2015
My friend and I chose to celebrate 20 years of friendship by finally traveling together to Europe. The voyage was short (my birthday in Dublin and the week of New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam), however, it certainly cleared the cobwebs out of our lives for 9 days. When I returned from this voyage, some of the songs on Thank Your Lucky Stars were the soundtrack to my life that winter, such as “Rough Song” with its blade sliding through a knife sharpener and other dark, mysterious textures.
May 2016
I had went on a road trip through the southwestern states during May 2014 and, two years later, I felt the western wilderness beckoning me again. Victoria Legrand’s & Alex Scally’s song “The Traveller” The Traveller – Beach House (OFFICIAL AUDIO) its lyrics about “Saturn turning” (I had just experienced my first Saturn return in 2014) spoke to me. “Levitation” (the band’s best opening track) kept lifting me higher and higher as I sped down the freeway. Spring was in the air and the pastoral “Wildflower” fit the season. On May 6, 2016, I had the most profound psychedelic experience of my life (thus far) in the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. I remember my sweating hands feeling comfort in the red velvet of my Depression Cherry CD case. The closing track “Days of Candy” with its spiritual choir and lyrics “Just like that, it’s gone” was the soundtrack as I was coming down from my acid trip.
Beach House – Days of Candy
Two years later, in 2018,
the band released 7. The album has an energetic opener “Dark Spring” that fits the storminess of the season, “L’Inconnue” contains cathedral chants and French poetry that makes it unique, and “Lose Your Smile” with its breeziness and Slowdive sound gives the album some much needed breathing space since the production on “Lemon Glow”, “Drunk in LA”, “Black Car”, “Girl of the Year” is too claustrophobic and messy/murky. 7 was the first time durng my seven year relationship with Beach House that I felt a bit disappointed.
Four years later, in 2022
I finally broke up with Beach House. Why? Because of their new album Once Twice Melody (2022).
The opening title track with its “la-la-la” chorus, sparkling synths, and string section is a pretty prelude that invites the listener into Beach House’s world. The animation for its lyric video also fits the song with its emphasis on eyes. Though the song feels insubstantial, it is missing the emotional weight from previous Beach House albums. “Superstar” shows off a more 80s style synthpop and Victoria’s vocals are overly slathered by the production, plus the lyrics are simplistic. Scally’s guitar arrives near the end, but it is too brief. “Pink Funeral” begins in a moody way with the strings rising (as Victoria sings about in her lyrics). This song too features lyrics that are simply not that memorable and Victoria’s vocals are once again too buried by the artificial production. The strings too are not that unique, the strings are supposed to add some sort of emotion to the track, but I find it boring. Similar to “Superstar”, Scally’s guitar is the most ear-catching element, but it once again arrives at the very end and is extremely brief. “Through Me” makes the listener actually miss the previous tracks, the ear desperate to hear something a bit different, but this track is even more boring than “Superstar” and “Pink Funeral”. The midtempo electronics and production, plus Victoria’s robotic vocals make this track feel weak and Chapter 1 of the album feels like Beach House is on autopilot. “Through Me” is frustratingly repetitive and (like “Superstar”) it does not need a 6 minute running time.
The opening synthpop of “Runaway” is also frustratingly repetitive and this is one of the worst tracks on the album and in Beach House’s career, the band at its most 80s and artificial, the vocoder effects on Victoria’s vocals robotic and unappealing. Beach House has done the same thing in Once Twice Melody as Angel Olsen in All Mirrors, War On Drugs in I Don’t Live Here Anymore, and Tame Impala in Currents – in an attempt to alter their sound, they lazily fall back on 80s synthpop, one of the worst sounds, in my opinion. “ESP” slows down but rather than this being serene or soothing, the busy production even makes this slower song sound like a mess. There are strings again but, once again, like Victoria’s vocals/lyrics, they are obscured by the production. “New Romance” is the seventh track and by this point it almost feels like Beach House is falling into a self-parody of their sound, the artificial sounding production, Victoria’s vocals still robotic, and the lyrics repeating the same exact line as the opening title track (“Days go by”) and some of the other lines sound similar to what the listener has already heard repeatedly in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 of the album closes with “Over and Over”, the longest track on the album at 7 minutes and (like the 6 minute “Pink Funeral”) it does not need this longer running time. Once again, the band seems like self-parody here with the artificial production/synths, Victoria’s robotic vocals, and her lyrics about angels and flowers. As a listener only halfway through the album at 41 minutes, it is deeply disappointing that there is no variety among these 8 tracks. 41 minutes is the length of Thank Your Lucky Stars, an album by the band that received a muted reception and was disliked by some critics because of being released only two months after Depression Cherry, but Thank Your Lucky Stars actually did have some variety amidst its tracks and, crucially, more emotion.
Thankfully, the listener’s ears finally get some breathing space on “Sunset”, the ninth track and first from Chapter 3, with its acoustic guitar and airy strings that you can finally hear since they are not swamped by overproduction. Because there is finally some space for Victoria’s vocals, you can finally hear her lyrics a bit more. There is nature imagery and spirituality which makes it a refreshing contrast to the cliche-ridden love lyrics in Chapters 1 & 2. “Only You Know”, though, is back to the basic template that was already heard on Chapters 1 & 2 – electronic production that is dull and repetitive. “Another Go Around” continues to rely on lovelorn lyrics that are not memorable and the song is once again repetitive like so many on this record, without any development dramatically or dynamically, it just sort of cyclees over and over like a dream pop drying machine. “Masquerade” opens with more of the 80s synthpop style and though it initially attempts to present an “edgier” sound (as the band attempted on 7), their efforts were superior on Thank Your Lucky Stars. The gothic lyrics and gritty guitar on songs such as “One Thing” and “Elegy to the Void” were more successful because both Legrand’s vocals/lyrics and Scally’s sludgy guitar were actually front and center, not buried by overproduction. “Illusion of Forever” keeps making the same mistake – more midtempo electronics and more dream pop self-parody (this time diamonds and rubies).
The listener is now over an hour into the album and desperate for either a change to the instrumentation or finally some emotion in Victoria’s voice. Remember “On the Sea” and the emotional intensity in Victoria’s vocals? That’s unfortunately nowhere to be heard here. The band titled the first track of Chapter 4 (track 14!) “Finale”. Never has any Beach House track been more inaccurately named. “Finale” is bright, 80s, shiny synthpop but like almost every track on the album, it demands nothing of the listener. Rather than sounding climactic (as the title would suggest), it just goes in one ear and out the other like background music you would hear at a mall while window shopping and looking at faux fancy objects. “The Bells” (like “Sunset”) is one of the only tracks on the album that takes a break from the overproduced synthpop. Unfortunately, unlike “Sunset” with its acoustic guitar and airy string section actually feeling like a bit of breathing space, “The Bells” (unlike its title) does not offer any interesting instrumental changes to entice the listener’s ears. Alex Scally’s slide guitar (his trademark from earlier Beach House albums) is finally given the most room on the album, but the plodding song doesn’t give it the showcase it deserves. The reader is probably tired at this point of reading my descriptions of these tracks, but I doubt the reader is as tired as I am after listening to this album for 75 minutes. “Hurts to Love” has a synth beat that is almost reminiscent of the fantasy film Neverending Story. It’s once again midtempo 80s style synthpop that hurts me to hear because after 75 minutes (and with only two tracks left), I’m desperate for emotion. Victoria & Alex, I want to feel something! You two could always touch the listener’s emotions on your previous albums. What happened? Unlike “Real Love” Beach House – Real Love (from Teen Dream) where you could hear every pained sigh in Victoria’s voice and a teardrop rolling down her cheek, “Hurts to Love” just blends into the background. “Many Nights” is initially a throwback to the early Beach House sound (circa their debut and Devotion) with its delicate keyboard melody and much more sparse sound compared to the rest of this album. Halfway through the track there is a brief synth swell that decorates the track more than their early songs. This synth swell returns at the end of the track. Though the track does not do enough to inject any emotion or energy this late in the album, its gossamer gracefulness is a bit lovely and a respite from the overproduced synthpop. The closing track “Modern Love Stories” is supposed to be where the band pulls out all the stops to leave a lasting impression upon the listener. It certainly contains the most diversity instrumentally of any track on the album (apart from “Sunset”). Alex Scally’s acoustic guitar and the string section sound somewhat reminiscent of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and his electric guitar gives floating flourishes that I would have liked to hear more of throughout the album.
Remember Alex Scally’s guitar at its most intense in “Irene” Beach House – “Irene” – Forever Still (the closing track of Bloom) or Victoria Legrand’s vocals at their most romantic in “Somewhere Tonight” Beach House – Somewhere Tonight, a cinematic, timeless closing track, a 1950s/1960s style slow dance into oblivion (the closing track of Thank Your Lucky Stars)? There are no moments that satisfying when you reach the end of Once Twice Melody.
Beach House’s Teen Dream, Bloom, Depression Cherry, Thank Your Lucky Stars felt like a broken heart honeyed with magical textures. Once Twice Melody is like confections or jewelry that are too shiny and too sticky, the heart and soul missing. Just like after consuming too many sweets, Once Twice Melody leaves me feeling hollow rather than the emotional fullness I experienced on Teen Dream, Bloom, Depression Cherry, Thank Your Lucky Stars.
by Mark Lager