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QUICK SPIN: Beach House

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 2, 2010 4:20PM

In which we take a quick look at a recent musical release.

Beach House
Teen Dream

2010_04_beach_house.jpg Beach House builds the songs on Teen Dream upon a core of repetition and then allows slowly growing layers to shift the mood back and forth by allowing certain sections to swell while others recede into the distance. A single guitar line will pick its way through a song, creating the spine, while synths and gentle drum accents color the space around with muscle that shimmers and then dissipates. It's difficult to categorize this; sometimes the songs seem to carry the sonics of spring, pushing sprouts forward with fragile optimism, and then other times it seems as if the exact same material could be envisioned as a wind swept beach under a grey sky, marked by boot prints of lone travelers making their way down the shore.

It's this constant shifting that adds dynamism to this collection of mid-tempo ruminations. When you find yourself soaring along with the music sometimes it's hard to figure out if you're heading towards the heavens or if you're about to crash and splinter against the hard ground rushing up to meet you.

MP3: Beach House "Norway"

Beach House plays tonight, April 2, at Metro, 3730 N Clark, 9 p.m., SOLD OUT, 18+