Oh So Dreamy!

Beach House gets obsessed with making album no. 3

By: Natalie David

Teen Dream. The phrase evokes images of Tiger Beat magazine covers and John Hughes-style teenage romance. But for Baltimore duo Beach House, it represents something far less concrete.

“I think ‘Teen Dream,’ for us, is just really symbolic of that unbridled obsession and passion and that feeling of really, really loving things and giving yourself to things wholeheartedly, that you get as a teen, and then occasionally when you’re older,” Alex Scally, the guitar and keyboards half of Beach House, says of the duo’s choice of title for its third album. “The title is more like an invitation to be intoxicated in this feeling.”

Accepting the invitation finds Beach House at its best yet. Indie darlings from the start, their 2006 eponymous debut caught the attention of Internet tastemakers for its beautiful, dreamy pop soundscapes and singer/organist Victoria Legrand’s captivating alto, a voice that inspired Grizzly Bear to steal the chanteuse for backing vocals on Veckatimest’s “Two Weeks” and “Slow Life,” that band’s contribution to the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack.

Teen Dream, however, showcases not necessarily an all-new Beach House, but one that has finally realized its sound to completion. Having more time to write and record than ever before (Beach House was recorded in three days, 2008’s Devotion in 10), Scally and Legrand relocated to upstate New York to wholly immerse themselves and take full advantage of the month they were given for their Sub Pop debut.

But the creative energy surrounding Teen Dream came to the surface nine months earlier. Freshly back in Baltimore with tour obligations for Devotion finally fulfilled, the duo felt an immediate gravitational pull to start writing anew. The process ultimately became more intense and exciting than either Legrand or Scally anticipated, even from those early tugs of inspiration.

“When we started to put together all the ideas that had been forming, our little songbuds, they pulled us really hard,” says Scally. “It wrapped us inward. We could have spent 30 hours a week working on it, but it was asking us to spend more. We were really compelled by the songs and by the process.”

Once holed up at the studio in New York, a converted church called Dreamland (“It didn’t have that scary ominous feeling that churches have. It was more like a barn”), Teen Dream became Scally and Legrand’s end-all be-all, 24/7. There were no distractions, no other thoughts.

“We had always recorded in Baltimore, and I think the reason we [recorded in New York] was so that there was no chance of going out at night. There would be no chance of seeing friends,” he says. “The only thing in our minds was the record.”

Such an intimate creative process suits the intimacy that often comes across in Beach House’s music. Quick to point out that this intimacy does not stem for any kind of romantic entanglement, (“Whenever people see a band that’s two people, a guy and girl, that’s one of the first things they assume.”), Scally asserts that even though their working chemistry is a factor, that sense of familiarity and connectivity comes straight from Legrand.

“That’s how she communicates, it’s like pulling you inward. Even me, and I’m in the band,” says Scally. “I’m like the No. 1 Beach House fan because I get to listen to her sing all the time. The way she says words, and the kind of words she uses, and the way that she puts together a melody, I think is what elicits an intimate response from people.”

In an effort to expand the band’s reach beyond music, Beach House curated a series of videos, each corresponding to a song on Teen Dream, for a DVD to be packed with the new album. Not music videos per se, filmmaker friends of the band were assigned a song, given a little bit of money, and had free reign of artistic expression.

“It’s amazing because when you write music you always have your visions of it and when the videos came back and we got to see somebody else’s vision of it, it almost shocked us. It brought in our own understanding of the music,” says Scally. “That’s something we hope will happen for everyone, that they watch these videos and experience a different side of the music than they originally felt and are led into a wider and richer world of interpretation.”

To download a pdf of this article, click here.