Beach House
Issue #35
Devotion (Car Park)
By John Everhart
Published: March 1st, 2008 | 1:44pm
It’s a shame that David Lynch adopted Au Revoir Simone as his new favorite band, as he probably hasn’t had the good fortune of hearing Beach House. The Baltimore two-piece follow a similarly threadbare aesthetic as Au Revoir Simone, yet seem a better suit to the director’s decidedly idiosyncratic sensibilities — the members of Beach House are far more nefarious and considerably better songwriters. They could’ve been standbys at the Twin Peaks Road House, or, better yet, tracked some of the hallucinatory fever dream sequences of Inland Empire. As it stands, they’re a great, relatively unheralded duo whose self-titled first record was sublime, and a follow-up, Devotion, that actually betters it.
While copious reverb still envelops these tracks like a warm cocoon as it did throughout their debut, Devotion also expands the act’s monochromatic sonic palette considerably. “Wedding Bells” is a narcotized homage to the Beach Boys’ “California Girls,” thickened by muscular ripples of guitar. “You Came To Me” is a “Femme Fetale”–shaped pastel ballad, gorgeously showcasing the decidedly Nico-like monotonous coo of singer Victoria Legrand. There’s even a hint of Brian Eno–circa–Another Green World in the sweet undulating wash of “Astronaut,” and a subtle Motown nod on the superb, slide guitar–inflected “D.A.R.L.I.N.G.”
Surprisingly, it’s a truncated take on Daniel Johnston’s “Some Things Last a Long Time” that best captures the essence of Devotion. It subverts the bereft psychosis of the original, instead imbuing the track with an icy detachment that effectively freezes the moment, hanging elusively out of time and place as Legrand croons over the elegiac, gently pulsating melody, “Your picture is still on my wall / The colors are bright as ever.” This is what Devotion achieves; it’s a hazily impressionistic collection of analog chamber pop that evokes mesmerizing reveries.
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