Sometimes, in post-coital embrace, we live outside of time. Our bodies cuddle close to the warm nucleus, letting the world outside of our beds hazily disintegrate. And in the hours we live in the “real” world, our minds occasionally look back, remembering the glow, the freedom from triviality.
In attempting to document this spiritual moment, Mazzy Star’s 1994 song “Fade into You” opened a very specific musical inlet, breathing the embrace into reality through a mixture of warm shoegaze and delicate female vocals. Ten years later, Baltimore duo Beach House entered this inlet, following it into a personal expanse of tenderness, intimacy and sexuality.
Since beginning their voyage, the band has never altered its course, but instead found itself in an ever-deepening ocean, painting their intimate pop with increasing amounts of wonder and orchestration. If their 2006 debut was merely a lo-fi glimmer of sexual connection and 2008’s “Devotion” was a richer commitment to the religion of sexuality, this year’s “Teen Dream” is the encompassing memory of transcendent intercourse alive even in the wake of its current loss.
Musically, Beach House lounges in the world of comfortable correspondence: the tones of clasped hands, open mouths and bending bodies. But, on “Teen Dream,” lead singer Victoria Legrand sings about separation, valleys without columns. “Walk in the Park” meditates on the experience of forgetting the body, the blood and the language.
Legrand croons over a lonely drum beat and evocative guitar, slowly blending together with keyboard melodies into a climax: “The face that you saw in the door isn’t looking at you anymore/The name that you call in its place isn’t waiting for your embrace/The word that you learned to behold cannot hold you anymore/In a matter of time, it would slip from my mind.”
It’s all loss on this album, separation from those rare moments of human connection that so frequently come in long-term sexual correspondence. “Used to Be” is the anthem of human beings growing apart, but at the same time the soul of the moments they cling to. Legrand calls out, “Don’t forget the nights when it all felt right/Are you not the same as you used to be” and we feel it, the music acting as comfort so difficult to tear away from.
Closer “Take Care” is the defining statement of the album. “You can hide the way you make us glow/It’s no good unless it glows/Feelings burning/Lover while/Deep inside the ever spinning/Tell me does it feel/It’s no good unless it’s real.”
They waltz around the nucleus. We can only make it to the blissful center together, the true original sin is our denial of the blood. Language, modernity and triviality pull us away from the core. Legrand calls out, “I’ll take care of you/If you ask me to” and from that moment the band shows us nothing but the beauty of two bodies carrying the message.
This album is nothing but reassurance. We speak of Southern cuisine as comfort food because it’s savory and filling. It descends into our bellies and makes us feel whole. Much the same way, Beach House is comfort music — music that descends into our loins and fills us, reassures us.