Despite its summery name, Beach House creates music that is dark, dreamy, and alluringly hypnotic. Baltimore residents Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand (the niece of French composer Michel Legrand) formed the duo in 2005, with Legrand's hushed, Nico-like vocals and Scally's delicate instrumentation paving the way for their first batch of songs. Within a year, Beach House had charmed indie music enthusiasts across the blogosphere with its languid songcraft, and the eerie warmth of "Apple Orchard" landed on Pitchfork's Infinite Mixtape MP3 series in August 2006. Two months later, Beach House issued its eponymous debut album for Carpark. The band remained with the Carpark label for one additional album, 2008's Devotion, before graduating to Sub Pop and releasing Teen Dream in early 2010. The duo built on the acclaim of Teen Dream with 2012's Bloom, meticulously constructing a unified sound and vision meant to be experienced as an entire album rather than a collection of songs.
MacKenzie Wilson
AllMusic.com
