Teen Dream

Beach HouseTeen Dream

I made every attempt to ignore the zebra print cover art for Beach House’s third record, Teen Dream, as I rescued it from it’s wrapper. Once inside the zebra carcass I found - surprise, surprise - two discs and two books. Bonus! I put the disc with the Easter blue zebra print on it in the player. Didn’t appear to play. Put the disc with the Easter pink zebra print on it. Also didn’t play. I looked at the pink zebra book then the blue zebra book. Stumped. And already tired of zebra. Then, finally, I put the blue disc back in … it worked. It had a bit of silence at the beginning before things got started, but, once the music fell from the carcass, it sounded big and grad. Immediately better than the band’s first two records. Turned it up.

The pink book revealed that the pink disc was in fact a full-length DVD full of videos for every song on the album, each video directed by a different filmmaker. The first director’s name? Sean Pecknold. Hmm. Pecknold, as in Fleet Foxes Pecknold? Yep, the brother of the head Fox. Seemed odd to me, considering my first thought as Teen Dream’s opening song played was “it sounds like these guys have been listening to the Fleet Foxes since their last album.” Weird. The closing video was directed by Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew, too. But no, Teen Dream doesn’t really sound too much like BSS. More on the videos later.

The first thing you need to know about the music side of Teen Dream is that it is a very big sounding record. Band members Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally took the R.E.M. approach while following up the success of their 2007 breakthrough, Devotion, here recording in a converted church. On board for the recordings was producer Chris Coady, a studio whiz known for helping bands (most notably TV on the Radio) sound bigger than life. The result is a record that sounds like a mix of Devotion, the Fleet Foxes, the most recent M83 record and Mazzy Star. The sound is dusty and dreamlike. Vintage in a really hip soap opera sort of way, if you can imagine such a thing.

Both books are full of creative imagery, giving Teen Dream the feel of a full-blown art project. Music. Film. Art. Some of the images in the blue book would’ve made for great album covers. (Anything but zebra print.) The songwriting here is good. Almost as good as the ornamentation, production or soulful - almost creepy - vocals. Nothing profound or hugely creative about the writing, but surely the kind of material that will dig its hooks into a fair share of arty college-age girls (and sensitive boys with silly glasses). Also recommended to the future soap-watchers of the world.

Needless to say when speaking of Beach House, this is a very dramatic sounding music, but in a cool way. Not quite Antony Hegarty Johnson dramatic, but in that ballpark. And the videos are a nice bonus, even if much of the work probably belongs on YouTube with all the other filmschool videos out there, rather than on a nationally distributed DVD. But that’s not the point. The point is that this is very theatrical, visual music, so who cares if the videos are all big on production and short on concept and execution. There are much less desirable things to do than watch 10 young video artists overusing Final Cut Pro while listening to some very stellar tunes. Sean Honey’s video for “Lover of Mine,” in particular, is a success. Beach House singer Victoria Legrand’s video for “Silver Soul” is another winner, even if her work clearly struggles to find a balance between subject and style. Oh, and let’s not forget director Allen Cordell’s half great work on the video for “Walk in the Park.” Some beautiful cinematography on that one.

So, for a very modest price, you get a great new set of dream-pop music, a disc full of video art, two books and some zebra prints. Not bad. The main event here, obviously, is the music. And while the full presentation does enhance the experience, in the end, we just have the tunes. And they’re great. Teen Dream is the new cult classic of the uber dramatic, endlessly cinematic and wholly effeminate Sour Times genre. If you like Low, the Cocteau Twins, Portishead, Mazzy Star or even the Fleet Foxes and shoegazer stuff like Ride, chances are Teen Dream is going to be a very big record for you.    9/10

Written by G. William Locke