Record Review: Beach House - Teen Dream
Written by Russ Crandall   
Monday, 05 April 2010 08:05
Let's talk Baltimore for a second. Charm City gave a lot of good bands their first break - Animal Collective and Cass McCombs, among others - but they all seem to move away once they gain some success. Not true with Baltimore's lone great band, Beach House. This dream pop duo can't get enough of Chesapeake blue crabs, apparently. And as interesting as all that is, it has nothing to do with their third album, Teen Dream, which came out in January; sadly (for you), I never got around to writing a review until right now.

I like this album more than their previous two, thanks to its focus on melody along with their trademark hauntingly atmospheric sound. This fact alone makes this album infinitely more accessible than their other albums. Each song has a unique and interesting vocal melody to it, especially opener "Zebra", whose hook skirts the song's pitch in an effective way. Singer Victoria Legrand's vocals are low and raspy, and relay a strong sense of sophistication; the vocal tracks are mixed high to ensure they're the focus of each song, and rightly so.

The songs tend to be on the long side (most are over five minutes long), but it's fitting for these slow, measured tracks. However, this results in a long album as well, and usually by the time that the final tracks roll around, I'm ready to listen to something else. I've worked around this by taking the album on in halves, which significantly shortens and improves the experience.

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