I’m really finally doing it, for
reals. I am, right? I wonder if something else will come up to stop me from
listening to the new Beach House album. Better stop wasting time on a lame
introduction.
- Dark Spring
Well it sounds like Beach House
so far. I will be good if the whole thing “sounds like Beach House”. Good but
not great. The last album(s) (since two came out in the same year they count as
one album) were fine but not amazing. Not Bloom. Not much is Bloom. This song
isn’t Bloom yet, but maybe it will get there.
- Pay No Mind
Oh! Nice transition! OK, the
first song was pretty standard and maybe this one will be too but I absolutely
love the smooth transition into an abrupt change of pace. This is so laid-back
that I’m already asleep. This is more what I was hoping for – I want to drift
around through gauze-y distortion. The last song was a little too late-90s 4AD
for me to outright love it. Not that this wouldn’t also be at home in that
category but at least there are open spaces between the fuzzed guitars. Oh hey,
Sonic Boom produced this. Neat! This song is great.
- Lemon Glow
Silence…another drastic change of
pace. I wondered if the space sirens would come out to play. They have. I
already wish this song wasn’t so poppy. I think it’s the first single though so
I guess they had to. So far I don’t love that I can actually understand what
they’re saying. One of my favorite parts of the old albums is that it took like
100 listens to figure out even parts of the lyrics. Until then you could sing
along by going LA LA HM HMMM WISHES LA LA LA.
- L’Inconnue
Stupid French title. I hate
French titles to songs. Unless they’re in French, then I suppose it’s OK. The
mostly a capella intro is nice. Can something be “mostly” a capella? Or does it
just become a song as soon as there’s anything more than vocals? Discuss as a
group. I’m turning my volume up because I feel like I’m missing something. I
really need to disappear into the music more and it’s just not happening so
far.
Louder is definitely better.
- Drunk In LA
Here we go…I have no clue what
they’re saying. That’s more like it. WAY GO || I have no clue what I was about
to write. It was probably hilarious. Anyway, this is going really well for me.
I would like to listen to this song again but for the sake of both art and
science I’ll go on to the next one.
- Dive
Organ, hooray! Except then I
missed the rest of the song but what I heard was pretty good.
- Black Car
This should be called Black SPACE
Car because I feel like I’m driving through space. That’s probably the only
place I would enjoy driving. No, that’s dumb. I would still hate driving there.
Driving is for suckers. This slows things down nicely. Turns out I have a lot
more to say about albums that I hate. So far this is pretty much just me saying
“I like this” in seven slightly different ways.
- Lose Your Smile
The last song was driving through
space, this one is hanging out on the beach around the smoldering remains of a
fire and looking up at space. It sounds like something else I know but I can’t
think of it right now so this whole sentence was one big waste of time. I just
remembered that the name of the band has to do with the beach. True story, also
a waste of time.
||
- Woo
I was thinking this song was
pretty generic and then I remembered to turn my volume up again. There are
these charming little whispers and yelps of WOO! In the background of all the
fuzz that pop out occasionally. Some of the guitar work feels a little dated (I’m
good with it on Spacement 3 albums from 30 years ago though) but it’s not so
much that it pulls me out of the song.
- Girl Of The Year
A little slower, a little more
organ. That’s the title of the Beach House sex video. The drums annoy me like
crazy in this song. They sound out of place and forced. I’m trying to separate
them out from the rest and I think I would really like this song if it had
different percussion, or even no percussion at all. Well that ended abruptly.
- Last Ride
This starts like a good finish.
Slightly fuzzy piano, I’m into you. Here come the space bees, home to rest on
the beach at the end of a long day of buzzing around nebulas for that sweet,
sweet space nectar. Do bees eat nectar? Now I can’t remember. I guess so. What
else would they be doing on the flowers? Darn…vocals. I was hoping this was an
instrumental lead-out. It’s still nicely sparse. DRUMTAMBORINE YOU RUINED IT
FOR ME. Maybe I’m just in the wrong frame of mind for this percussion now
compared to my last run at this album. There’s a whole heck of a lot going on
in this song. I’m actually really glad it’s seven minutes long. At four minutes
I’m not ready for it to end yet and I want to see where it goes. I actually
kind of wish it was 15 minutes so it could really take its time getting there.
Final Rating: Seven cosmic flowers out of 10. No wait…nine
rainbow nebulae out of 10. Crap…I don’t know. This is one of the first
times I’ve finished an album and didn’t have a strong sense of how I felt about
it. Overall I liked it a lot. No way is it Bloom, but that’s a perfect 10 album
for me. I think I liked this more than their last two but I’m already wondering
if it will get a handful of plays and fade into memory the way they did. Only
one solution – I’m putting it back on now at top volume even though it annoys me that the album name uses the numeral "7" instead of spelling it out.
