Beach House w/ Zomes
Bowery Ballroom
Tuesday, May 15

Better than: Having to wait two more months to see Beach House perform at Summerstage.

I've never had 500-plus people in the palm of my hand, but I imagine it must be a powerful feeling. Every eyeball fixated on you, every pair of hands waiting for you to stop singing so they can clap. At this point in their careers, Beach House's members should be no strangers to this feeling, yet their sheer charisma makes it seem like a brand new feeling for them. At the Bowery Ballroom—during a show celebrating the release of their gorgeous fourth album, Bloom—the band unleashed sound and fury and a lot of bright lights. As colors faded in and out of sight, seemingly in tandem with the intensity of singer Victoria Legrand, the trio showered the adoring crowd with the music they so desperately craved. There may have been tears from a gentleman behind me, although those might have come because the other half of Beach House, Alex Scally, was ignoring his obnoxious shouts of "ALEX!"

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Lyz Flyntz

Beach House didn't entirely disappear from the cultural consciousness, but they did go hide out for a while. The Baltimore duo of Alex Scally and Victoria LeGrand toured the hell out of their last record, Teen Dream, before heading back home to write Bloom (Sub Pop), which comes out tomorrow. Even their Twitter account (the frustratingly hard to remember @BeaccchHoussse) fell dormant for about a year. After a seven-week recording period in Texas, the band had a hell of a collection on their hands: 10 songs that weave in and out of themes like death, life, and that moment, so very small, of truth.

Whereas their previous release rode a lot of the tailwinds from its standout tracks ("Zebra," "10 Mile Stereo," and the gorgeous "Norway"), Bloom comes at you with the wallop of an hour-long odyssey, charting paths that perhaps you never thought to take. With ideas taken from a long touring period (180 shows since Teen Dream was released!), Beach House has landed on a feeling expressed in song, and a haunting work of art that surpasses even their own personal bests.

Sound of the City caught up with LeGrand over the phone as she rested up in Baltimore before the new-album whirlwind. She spoke about how people forget that the band did not debut with Teen Dream, and how New York can be a rough place to play a show. She also kept bringing up this idea of how important it is for her and Scally to know that they control how their music is being heard by their fans.

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Great song, at least

Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: myself, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. Let us acknowledge at the onset that we are ripping this off from Slate so hard, but though maybe let's think of it as more of an homage, the way the Black Eyed Peas' "The Time (Dirty Bit)" pays tribute to "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." Whether this is a wise analogy will be a central question undertaken by the panel.

For now, though, let's start by deciding, once and for all, if this really is The Greatest Year for Music Ever.

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After a recent pass at Phoenix's "Lisztomania," everyone's favorite youth chorus takes on the somewhat snoozy Beach House anthem, to particularly lovely effect. Both the band and the Daily News are now on board. Following the usual pop-phenomenon arc, then, expect about 50 solo albums next summer.

Beach House
Bell House
Tuesday, January 26

Susan Sarandon didn't pop onstage to spank a pig; no one shouted "9.0!" Very disappointing. Beach House's CD-release party ("I hope you find release," quips guitarist Alex Scally, who later adds that he hopes "we're having a peaceful time") is a demure, sleepy affair, a slowly breaking wave of very pretty drone-folk with songs I can't for the life of me distinguish from one another, enlivened somewhat by singer/organist Victoria Legrand (whom we chat with here), who bellows in a solid, sultry, smoky alto with just a touch of Kim Gordon abrasion and a mercifully lack of wacky/precocious affectation. Plus her stage banter is agreeably loopy:

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Last time we spoke with Beach House, Baltimore's best dream-haze band, was in the summer of 2008, right before they were about to play the Siren Festival--smack dab in the middle of the afternoon. (Even Legrand conceded, "There's something about Beach House playing at 11:30 in a cave in Norway that seems more appropriate.") Since then, they've toured the world over, vocalist/keyboardist Victoria Legrand has lent her vocals to Grizzy Bear's Veckastimist and the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack, and the duo contributed a cover of Queen's "Play the Game" to last year's Dark Was The Night compilation. This week they return with their third album and Sub Pop debut, Teen Dream, a record that builds on their layered approach to writing sweet-drugs-come-down- pop songs. But this time they've consciously added more rhythmic elements--or as Legrand explains it, "These songs explode off each other, come out of deeper and farther places. There still is reverb, but things aren't so drenched in it."

If their past records were darker, washed-out things, where you sorta felt like the band was hiding something, Teen Dream feels like a coming out party. It's happy, it's proud, and feels like you're looking directly at them, instead of eavesdropping on their subconscious.

We spoke with Victoria Legrand last week from her apartment in Baltimore. Beach House play the Bell House tonight and Webster Hall on May 6.

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Dreamy Baltimore-based duo Beach House have signed to Sub Pop, the label announced yesterday:

There is no denying true love. Especially bi-coastal love between us and the Baltimore City based Beach House. The super talented duo, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand, first fused their respective musical creativity in 2005, releasing their self-titled debut in February of 2006 and the second, Devotion, in August of 2007.

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Sam Horine

Hey, look, Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste went to that Jay-Z show yesterday in Williamsburg.

A whole summer's worth of Jelly NYC Pool Parties on the Williamsburg waterfront took a bow yesterday, as Grizzly Bear, Beach House, and Vega played the final Sunday of the 2009 series. Solange Knowles' sister and her gentleman escort (who has about as much of an idea about how to dance to Grizzly Bear as I do) were in the building, along with Solange herself. Also, Chuck Schumer, for the second week running. The future status of the Pool Parties is not promised, our senior Senator noted, but he vowed to do all in his power to bring the burgeoning Brooklyn tradition back to the same spot next summer. In the meantime, peruse our slideshow--this will all seem like a very long time ago any minute now.