Soundbite: “Teen Dream” Beach House

The same few words are used to describe the music of Baltimore duo Beach House: dreamlike, ethereal, haunting, excellent. They’ve always been true, and they’re still true now. But “Teen Dream” is different in that it’s not a teenaged effort, but is fully matured, self-actualized. (Granted, if we were to assign their previous two albums to an age group, it would be highly advanced teenagers in the first place.) Their confidence as a band is apparent but not boastful, because the product they have produced possesses a softness that captures the visceral nature of emotions and memories.

The album was recorded in a converted church in upstate New York fittingly named “Dreamland.” There must have been some magic dream-inducing chemicals seeping through the walls and into the recording materials, because that’s exactly what this album sounds like. Vocalist Victoria Legrand has cited the misty, dreamlike (there it is again) films of David Lynch as inspiration, and we can definitely sense a layered melancholy in the album as well.

But the sound of “Teen Dream” is far from the ambiguity of dreams; it couldn’t be more technically assured. As Alex Scally’s guitar chimes in the first moments of opening track “Zebra” we’re immediately struck by the clarity of the sound, and the album remains technically impressive throughout. It’s rare that a band that has been lauded for its old school, low-fi sound can retain intimacy even after it smooths out the production, but Beach House does.

The songs flow together but there are enough differing details within each one that keeps the album from sounding stagnant. The slide guitar on “Silver Soul” initially sounds almost Hawaiian, but the chiming of the organ and the shoegaze buzzing transforms the song to a ballad more fitting for a luau in a barren desert, or for when you had your headphones on in your room when you were 16. They’re basically the same places anyway.

The band goes retro with some drum machine beats on “Walk in the Park” and they use 80s-style synth and keyboards on several of the tracks. The musicians keep themselves from being too easily pigeonholed as an obnoxiously wannabe retro band because of the way they layer everything so expertly. On top of the instrumental richness, Legrand, a classically trained vocalist, uses her incredible range to intone much of the ambiguity of the lyrics. Her voice is lush with longing, love, heartbreak, melancholy and more love and longing that is completely captivating.

Lyrically, the songs’ meanings are vague, and based around a stream-of-consciousness series of images. But the opaqueness certainly adds to the gloominess and to the mystery that make them so interesting. “The silver soul is running through / It’s a vision, complete illusion,” Legrand sings, over a backdrop of guitar that sounds silvery itself. This is one of the outstanding gems (or precious metals) of the album.

“Norway” is another standout, beginning with Legrand’s sexy high-pitched panting before the organ spirals into temporary wooziness. “We were sleeping till / You came along / with your diamond heart / You let us in the wooden house / To share in all the wealth.” How can you analyze what this means? Sigmund Freud might have a field day with this one, but for the rest of us, we can appreciate the images and the romance the words create when they’re woven together like this.

Think of yourself when you were a teenager: you felt things and didn’t know what they were, but as you look back on them, you feel kind of sad for something. What Beach House does on “Teen Dream” is dreamily, ethereally, hauntingly and excellently convey the memories of those vague feelings, or whatever they are, into something we can relate to now, beyond the dreams of our teenage years.

E-mail McReynolds at [email protected].