It was the fall of 2018, at a family gathering in Skopje. I approached my older eclectic cousin, an art historian and graphic designer, to ask about her favorite album. The following evening, she sent me a YouTube link to Beach House’s 2015 release “Depression Cherry.” With no plan to stay up late, I clicked play and was instantly sucked into the Beach House universe.
Their own universe emerged in 2004, on the porch of Alex Scally’s family home in Baltimore where he met Victoria Legrand. It is unclear whether the future bandmates’ chemistry resulted from their immediate friendship or shared musical vision. But that day, Legrand recalls the moment she handed him a CD, which marked music as“the heart of the genesis of [their] friendship.”
Shortly after, the two found other aspiring Baltimore musicians and formed their first band, Daggerhearts, making bizarre yet tense dance music. Though the band called it quits within less than a year, those regular hangouts in each other’s apartments were the beginning of Legrand and Scally’s collaborative instinct.
In a Charlie Rose interview a decade after their debut, they reflect on their formative years in Baltimore, a city that became their “haven” and the rehearsal space their “church.” The spiritual undertones of their recording process are so evident that Legrand and Scally call each other “musical soulmates.”
That soulmate relationship would come to define the pair’s creative direction, and their reinvention of dream pop as a genre.
The pair’s process for writing songs is a kind of ritual. They set the foundation using a few chords and Legrand’s vocals, then building it up and embellishing it with fuzz and distortion pedals, reverb effects, more layered vocals, keys and organs. One summer night in 2005, jamming in Scally’s basement, they wrote their first song, “Saltwater,” a process they recall as being an “insanely natural thing.” Using a four-track tape, they recorded their debut self-titled album over a two-day period that same summer, and released it in 2006, exactly 20 years ago.
The album’s signature idiosyncrasy is the organ — an unlikely pattern to appear on a dream-pop record, because the instrument’s buzzing vibrations can clash with the genre’s expected tenderness. However, Legrand and Scally experiment with a variety of organ sounds, supporting the main melodies of “Apple Orchard” and “Auburn and Ivory” or leading the listener into the bridges and interludes of “Lovelier Girl” and “Tokyo Witch.” Sometimes muffled and other times wheezingly loud, the organ fills the space between Legrand’s lyrics and creates a dreamy interplay with Scally’s sliding guitar.
The name “Beach House” came from within, while searching for otherworldly nouns to reflect the inner workings of their music.
In particular, the name arose from their song “House on the Hill.” With only eight short lines of lyrics, it is the record’s most sonically descriptive song. They don’t rely on their pre-programmed drum machine, but instead loop a clinking metallic sound as the rhythmic base. As the song grows into layered acoustic arpeggios and kaleidoscopic synth melody, it creates a sound that resembles clashing waves, dragging waters, and the hush of summer wind. Without needing to sample any actual beach sounds, the album transports us to their own beach house.
This implicit, intuitive use of imagery is what makes their self-titled debut album uniquely special — and true to its name.
The rest of the album incorporates sea and coast-related imagery through lyrics — “Dreaming in the saltwater” in the album’s opener and “She’s rolling down the water/But it always rains” in “Heart and Lungs.” Sometimes, it is unclear who is telling the story — the sea, the sand, or a stranded person at the beach. Other times, the water and the sand are personified through the guitar and keyboard effects. Through a balance of concrete imagery and emotional ambiguity, the listener can visualize a picture, but still assign their own experience to it.
Unlike their later records, which blur the boundary between dream pop and shoegaze through denser and more powerful sounds, Beach House’s self-titled debut keeps the volume simple and soft. In a recent interview focused on their most recent double LP release, “Once Twice Melody,” the journalist asks what they were going for when they made their first record in 2006. Their answer is: “We weren’t going for anything. We were just being ourselves, and letting whatever was there come out.”
Their answer is: “We weren’t going for anything. We were just being ourselves, and letting whatever was there come out.”
With their first record, Legrand and Scally created a world, which their discography over the last 20 years has only built upon and nourished.
Part of this world’s creation is fate; certainly, not all musicians that collaborate are musical soulmates. But more importantly, it was birthed from a place of genuine care and friendship. It acts as an antidote to the show business’s pressure for commercial success. Legrand and Scally built a beach house, and we are very lucky they opened its doors for us to listen.
Andrea Miloshevska PO ’28 is from North Macedonia, but every time she listens to this album she gets transported to the beach house.