In And Out Of My Life

Beach House “Silver Soul”

I’m very glad that I kept giving Beach House’s Sub Pop debut Teen Dream a shot. I knew that the record was interesting and good from the start, but too many of the songs were blurring together and I just was not connecting with the material on an emotional level. I heard the potential for that, and keeping in mind that a similar thing happened for me with Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns last year, I kept the album in rotation long enough for many of the tracks to sink in.

It’s easy to get lost in Teen Dream, in good and bad senses of that word. The individual songs have dynamics, but the album as a whole does not. It lingers in the same emotional and musical place, and so unless you pick up on the internal shifts in mood, rhythm, melody, and texture, it’s easy to shrug off. It’s the kind of record you have to learn and live with to fully appreciate, but it’s not some hassle. The melodies are low-key but gorgeous, and the arrangements somehow pull off the trick of sounding simultaneous stark and lush. It’s a very seductive set of songs, and once you get pulled in, it’s almost too cozy to get out.

The music has a melancholy tone, but it’s not miserable or dark. There’s an emotional spectrum, but every feeling on it is vague and poorly defined. Complacent is not a word that is generally used with a positive connotation, but in the best possible way, that word suits the vibe of Teen Dream. It’s not apathetic or numb, but it conveys a fragile stability in the face of strong emotion and potentially negative circumstances. Michael Azerrad and Nitsuh Abebe have been throwing around the phrase “smart and serene” to describe a certain strain of indie music that has caught on in recent years, and this record is like the epitome of all that. It’s cool and restrained, and fiery emotions are kept in check, but it’s not dumb or repressed. It’s just the sound of complex feelings mitigated by maturity and responsibility.

Buy it from Amazon.