Teen Dream

In the last issue I was imploring you all to take notice of John Hughes as one the greatest influences on modern music. _Teen Dream_ by Beach House is yet another album which evokes the hazy romance of your teenage years, as the title suggests, with each song sounding like it could have fitted perfectly into one of Hughes’ great teenage melodramas.

‘Zebra’, is bolder territory than Beach House have trod before, like the “stag in the white sand” they describe. The song strides as gallantly as its subject matter. The love which Legrand describes throughout the song is never far from the heartbreak that is so concurrant with teenage dreaming. Her woozy imagery, backed by a spare comforting guitar, is interrupted by crashing cymbals and gradually filled out by an emboldening drum beat. The song comes to an end with a jarring repetitive guitar line, so subtle that it is barely noticeable. ‘Zebra’, like the most affecting dreams, works at a deeply subconscious level.

It is Legrand’s ethereal husk, always on the verge of breaking, that is pushed to the limit in ‘Norway’ as she wails out the refrain. Moments of musical lightness are always underpinned by Legrand’s doubt, and serving to remind the listner of the fine line between dream and reality. Throughout the album Beach House find themselves somewhere between divine dream,and nightmare. Intriguingly, in the track that follows, Beach House take the exact opposite approach: they take one of the most painful experiences of teenage relationships and make it sound perfectly beautiful. Unlike ‘Norway’ where Legrand’s romanticism is subverted as she tells us that the images that have inspired thousands of countless young Romeos, instead of providing fodder for earnest longings, the “millions of stars. they hold onto your breath” are pulling her down.

What dominates _Teen Dream_ is this fragility, the confliction of the grand delusions of the earnest passions in romance. It provides an affecting muse for each and every song. Guitars, synthisers, voices, and drumbeats come together; the music harmonises, compliments, stumbles and falls like the subject matter they write about. The sumptuous instrumentation and beautiful melodies woven by Alex Scally provide a suitably affecting backdrop for Legrand’s abstract lyrics. Though, what they write about there are the flaws that Beach House, like so many teenagers at times, get bogged down in self pity and self indulgence. Unfortunately sometimes they end up indulging their misery too much, as on the likes ‘10 Mile Stereo’, which finds itself stuck in its own world without reaching out to the listener. This is a shame as it is preceded by two of the best songs to emerge out of 2010, in ‘Lover of Mine’ and ‘Better Times’. Beach House’s myspace tells the world that they want to sound like “making out”, and there is no doubt they achieve a feeling just as powerful, emphasized by the last farewell of ‘Take Care’, as they realise that their teen dreams are destined to be just memories.