Beach House go deep inside the ever-spinning with Teen Dream

After seeing the monstrosity of overbearing, poorly executed drum machines that was Beach House live when they opened for Grizzly Bear, I had written Beach House off as a band I would never like. (In hindsight, shame on me.) So, when their third album, Teen Dream, was released on Tuesday, I reluctantly gave it a listen.

The drum machines still remain, but instead of being the foregrounding feature, they are bathed in waves of sound, making for a much denser, layered listen than their live shows. Victoria Legrand’s vocals, which have the qualities of a more polished, haunting Patti Smith crossed with baroque pop, remain the most captivating element of Beach House. Indeed, otherwise, Teen Dream is incredibly one-toned and of a static tempo; this, of course, could also be pitched as an argument in favor of its cohesiveness. The main theme of the album? Romantic anxieties, to put it simply. On “Silver Soul,” Legrand sums it up, “We feel it move through our skin. It’s a sickness, a manic weakness…It’s happening again.” The album’s closing song, “Take Care,” is a bittersweet, yearning ballad championing love, (”Stand beside it, we can’t hide the way it makes us glow”) yet questioning of its reality (”Deep inside the ever-spinning, tell me does it feel”).

On future albums, it would be preferable that the band attempt to expand their sound and emotional range; on its own grounds, Teen Dream is a sea of sonics, meant for sinking happily into and floating away meditatively for an hour. —Cassie Traun, Editor