Beach House duo hits a turning point
Music: Band releases third album ‘Teen Dream’
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Published: February 5, 2010
NEW YORK — Since forming in 2004, the Baltimore duo Beach House has meticulously arranged atmospheric songs around a simple, often dreamy melody. Now, like one of its fleshed-out songs carefully built from a modest start, the band has grown into its own.
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Having chemistry
Scally grew up in Baltimore. He was classically trained on the piano but is most expert on the bass. He only began playing guitar when Beach House formed.
Legrand was born in Paris (her uncle is French composer Michel Legrand), raised in Philadelphia and later moved to Baltimore, where she met Scally through a mutual musician friend. Though their relationship is platonic, they immediately had, as Scally says, "supernatural chemistry.”
They say their sound has since gotten darker, "more Depeche-Moded-out,” but when they began playing together, they shared an obsession for warm 1960s sounds like the Zombies, Mamas and the Papas, and Donovan.
"We always start with some really small thing — like a melody, a drum beat, a few chords,” says Scally. "We really slowly build it up until it’s done.”
Their 2006 self-titled disc and 2008’s "Devotion” put Beach House on the radar of many indie fans. They also toured with Grizzly Bear, with whom Legrand sang on their modest hit "Two Weeks.”
Though there’s scant let up in the 10 songs of "Teen Dream,” the standout is perhaps "Walk in the Park,” a transportive torch song about the disappearing memory of an old love.
The two confess that they built the first version of "Walk in the Park” in "an epic battle” until they realized it sounded familiar. "We were like … it sounds just like that … song ‘Two Weeks,’” recalls Scally. They had to start over.
Performing live
In concert, "Walk in the Park” — like many of the songs on "Teen Dream” — has a way of thickening the air, the music enveloping the space.
On stage, Scally and Legrand banter between songs, and Legrand’s long chestnut hair cloaks her face as she bobs above her keyboards.
The album’s title informs its tunes, which are loosely about the irrational, hyper feelings of a teenager. Legrand says, though, that’s not exactly the perspective.
"It takes getting older a little bit to get young again — or something," he said.
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