Art, as we all know, is like Athena, the Greek Goddess of wisdom, warfare and crafts, who sprang fully formed and armed from the head of Zeus. That’s why it matters little that Victoria Legrand of Beach House’s comes from a famed French musical family that includes singer Christiane Legrand and composer Michel Legrand (who wrote The Windmills of Your Mind as well as the music for Jacques Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg).
It’s of no consequence that actress Kirsten Dunst was in the audience last night at Sala Rossa. I shouldn’t even mention that I think Beach House inhabit the same musical waters as the criminally underlooked (and publicity shy) Cass McCombs, or that I suspect it was Sub Pop who was behind the decision to release Norway as the first single, even though I think it’s one of the weaker and least representative tracks on Teen Dream. Unfortunately, I’ve never been one for close reading or New Criticism, so you’ll have to take this review, self-referential nonsense and all, as is.
I arrived at Sala Rossa at 9pm on the dot, caught up with the photographer José Enrique Montes Hernandez, checked in with friends and associates, grabbed a drink, and turned my attention to the stage for the opener’s set: New Zealand’s Bachelorette. Like the name suggests, Annabel Alpers is one woman: alone and possibly overly fond of cats. A song like the Breeders-esque I Want To Be Your Girlfriend is either indicative of her Ms. Alpers’ Jane Austen-induced spinsterphobia or her own great sense of humour.
Ms. Alpers set the pace for the night, never exceeding the preset drumbeat tempo on a long-forgotten organ you might find in your grandparent’s rumpus room, working through over an hour of dreamy, droning pop that reminded me of Miranda July fronting the Young Marble Giants.
In days of yore, the cigar-chomping vulgarians of Hollywood would bemoan the fact that there ain’t no more show in show business, that lazy bohemians had infiltrated our ranks and chased out all the real entertainers. It’s not that I expected a shy and polite New Zealander to don pasties and shake it, and certainly it’s one of the great cruelties of the demise of record sales that musicians who would be more comfortable cultivating their own musical garden at home are now forced to hop on stages across the world and bear their souls to snarky, hyper-opinionated blog readers such as your author, but, all of that said, if you’re going to nod towards the idea of entertainment and spectacle by projecting images behind you on stage, the least you could do is have more than two appear (a graphic of what appeared to be a space mountain and some sound waves). Bachelorette: exit stage right.
Beach House took to the stage, under a number of hanging tinseled diamonds, evoking a mournful high school prom motif, and bringing delight to all of the couples who saw this as a chance to show off their swaying prowess to their single friends. What better venue than Sala Rossa, with its shabby chic chandeliers and red velvet curtains for this show?
For this visit, Beach House was operating as a three piece – percussionist Dan Franz of Baltimore’s Arbouretum has joined them for the tour, and his contributions, while not showy, exceeded the workman-like treatment that a lesser musician would give them, giving form and shape to Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s melodies. Although I’ve read any number of comparisons to Nico, I hear more of Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie in Legrand’s voice than everyone’s favourite tone-deaf Teutonic junkie. And for the rest of the night, Beach House kept the audience enthrall, head-nodding and all, working through their newest material with precision and grace, addressing the audience in pitch-perfect French, and never once making us aware of the fact that we were in one of the most packed rooms the venue will see this year.
Beach House is so far and above anyone in the mode that they operate in, that it’s almost a crime to bring up comparisons to groups like Low or Bedhead (or even, brace yourself for it, the Archers of Loaf’s Chumming the Ocean, which Real Love brings to mind), and yet, there is some sort of precedent. In this case, though, Beach House aren’t standing on the shoulders of giants so much as transcending the limitations of a genre. How else to explain the fact that never once, throughout the entire show, did I feel tired or self-conscious or anything but delighted, even when the BPM never exceeded rate of molasses seeping across a tabletop. If this was a Low show, the band would be begging you to please take a seat, for the sake of your aching arches.
Call it dream-pop, call their songs languid odes to Morpheus, say whatever you want about the group, but what Beach House does, Beach House does very, very well. I’m not looking forward to the imitators, though.
by Jay Watts / photos Jose Enrique Montes Hernandez
