Beach House
Aug. 19, 2015 at Pearl Street Nightclub, Northampton
A sweat lodge triggers mystical experiences, or so they say. I haven’t tried it, but Pearl Street’s crowded and steamy concert by Beach House last Wednesday got me pretty close. My glasses fogged up upon arriving upstairs, so it’s a good thing the band is so chill. The dreamy duo from Baltimore play a laid-back brand of indie rock, and their recordings fall somewhere between the sculpted, echoey chamber pop of The xx and the gritty, trippy electro-rhythms of Kid A-era Radiohead.
They have put out four albums since 2006, and each of their songs is a four-minute bucket of sound overflowing with ethereal vocals by Victoria Legrand, slo-mo beats, and atmospheric guitars by Alex Scally. They are joined on tour by Skyler Skjelset on bass and Graham Hill on drums, which gives them a well-rounded sound onstage.
During their tight and dynamic 16-song set at Pearl Street, they played generous portions of their two most recent albums, both delightfully catchy and creative — Teen Dream from 2010 and Bloom from 2012 — as well as a few songs from their upcoming album Depression Cherry, which will be released on Aug. 28.
Their last two LPs were meticulously polished, so it is refreshing to hear their new single “Sparks” take a dark, raw turn, with Legrand singing of numbness and suburban alienation. Her sultry voice floats above a dirge of long, low beeping sounds swathed in reverb and fuzz, like the heartbeat of a dying supercomputer.
Not all their songs tip toward bizarre. In another new single, “Levitation,” Legrande sees opportunity in the darkness, singing “There’s a place I want to take you/ where the unknown will surround you.”
A couple of songs in, Legrande flips her Joplin-esque mane of brown hair to one side and yells, “You guys wet or what? It’s like a Slip ’N’ Slide in here!”
For a band so attuned to the melancholic and the minor-key, Beach House puts on a confident and rousing live show, drenched with interesting layers of sound.•
