Album: Bloom
Rating: 4.8
Beach House’s new album, Bloom, starts with the sound of the wind and the scent of summer or maybe flowers in bloom in the spring. It is always lifting, falling, bedazzled and growing toward something magnificent in its breadth. It is epic without being epic. It is haunting without the overt. It is melancholic and hopeful all at once.
Not unlike Radiohead, who tends to favor an emotional framework over a lyrical continuity, Beach House blurs its sounds toward the abstract realm of emotion. Their songs are lulls that become feelings and feelings that become color before the eye.
And again, like Radiohead, they are not easily parodied in their style. Their music seems to originate and flow from somewhere very close to home. There is no middle man — only the feeling that their sound is overflowing straight from the wells of the soul. Some people really are born to make music.
Many of the best bands seem to do everything at once. They recall the fragments of life in every song. They refract our tragedies, our triumphs and our vast autonomy for dismay and achieving all types of beauty. Beach House is among those rare bands that deliver that wide array in their sound. Listening to “Lazuli” is like listening to a year of life. “Myth” is hearing everything that could have been. Beach House is as substantial as it gets. Bloom is a triumph.
Give these tracks a listen: “Lazuli,” “Myth” and the rest of the album.
For Fans Of: M83, Radiohead, The Shins
– JAMES O’HARA
