Fifth post: Beach House's On the Sea

Rusty's waltz wednesday presents: On the Sea, by Beach House

Beach House, the band:

Beach house is a pop duo hailing from Baltimore, I really like them. I think people call their style "dream pop", which is pretty apt. Their songs tend to have strong vocal-driven melodies. Singer Victoria Legrand's voice soars above their tracks, and (to my ear) is augmented by effects that give it a fuzzy echo feel; it's all very dreamy. Guitarist Alex Scally picks out repetitive patterns on his electric guitar, and I think he uses some tremolo-like effect. It's all in very good taste.

The song:

True to our (post-modern) times, there's no obvious story to this song. It's the type of song where I've rarely paid attention to the lyrics. To my ear they help punctuate the melody, yet there's nothing in them that stand out, or bother me. Kind of like a good defensive defenceman in hockey: you don't notice him/her, but that's usually a good thing. Her vocals feature a (tasteful) sparing use of vibrato, and weaves in with Scally's guitar work.

Scally picks out lightly chorded triplets on his guitar which weave their way through the chord changes. Legrand uses a honky-tonk sound on her keyboard which drives the song along nicely. I really like the guitar solo at a minute-thirty-five which appears later in the song: Scally simply fast-picks out the melody to great effect.



Merry Christmas to all! May this song remind everyone of nice weather and long days to come (eventually...I hope).