Artist: Beach House

Album: Teen Dream

Reviewer: Laura Snapes

NME, 2010

Writing Disorders: Purple Hemorrhage, Idea Fever







Longest Sentence: 59 words

WTF: “that’d be as churlish as complaining that a masseuse’s hands were too soft while reclining on a goosedown quilt”



Laura, I haven’t featured many women on RipFork so far. It’s not that I have a problem with ragging on a girl’s review, but rather just that it’s usually the guys who write torrid essays about bands. I just couldn’t resist the siren call of your wordy flourish, though. If you’d traded NME’s thumbnail of the album art for a picture of a buxom maiden thrusting her cans off the prow of a merchantman, you could have sold this review as a Harlequin romance and bled some old women dry.

Before we get to your choicest bits of silky language, though, let’s begin with a slice of your opening paragraph. It had my brain in knots.

“Rather than cutting them through the middle and counting the rings, it’s far easier to pinpoint when someone was a teenager by the places where they used to while away the hours – the diner, a roller-disco, a drive-in movie.”

I tried, but I just couldn’t figure out the logic behind this sentence, Laura. There’s a far easier way of pinpointing when someone was a teenager than just asking how old they are? Wouldn’t knowing where someone hung out tell you WHERE he or she was as a teenager more than when? Couldn’t you just make an assessment of their age based on their appearance if you’re standing there asking them where they hung out in days of yore? All that seems easier than hypothesizing about when a person might have been hanging out at a particular diner. However, as a man who grew up counting the rings of the trees that kept him warm through the winters, I do like that metaphor. Trees are good.

My confusion didn’t stop with your intro. Along came your bit about the band’s previous albums:

“the break with the spidery, sparse sound of their first two albums affords them far fewer places to hide.”

Ah yes, because spidery, sparse sound encompasses 99.9% of the known world of music. What exactly does spidery sound…sound like? Completely inaudible – or if it’s big enough, a flutter of hairy legs pattering across skin right before you shriek bloody murder? Jesus, how did music become such a profitable venture if that’s the case?

I’m just joshing, Laura. I’m sure you meant something that made sense in your mind. Like this:

“unlike some of their woozy brethren, it manages to paint a tremendously authentic portrait of youth and young love”

So this band manages to incorporate the individual circumstances of millions of young people and their intensely varied relationships with one another across geographic and social lines? That task seems a bit Herculean for any one band. Do you think maybe some of their woozy brethren were just writing songs that didn’t quite align with your own personal experience of young love?

I did promise I’d touch on your silky language, and here’s my favorite bit:

“Whereas previously they’ve shuffled in with spindly shakers, there’s a delicate pride when Scally’s waltzing guitar leads the way for Legrand’s heavenly “Aaahs” and the emboldened, lolloping sound that curves and swoops, as if exploring the contours of another’s body with slow, febrile urgency, before galloping away in shimmering cymbals.”

Laura, I’m sorry, but I’m laughing my ass off over here. I’m sure that bit was meant to be sensual, but I’m looking at the phrase “galloping away in shimmering cymbals” and I’m picturing a centaur slamming cymbals together while charging away from a woman he just groped. It’s cool if you want to lead us into a world of erotic song description, but when the metaphors are mashed together into one giant 50-word sentence, it can get confusing fast.

Then again, you don’t do much better when you keep it short:

“On ‘Norway’ she stretches the words long beyond their natural conclusion, inviting us to hibernate in the myriad syllables.”

Does she also remind us to boost our fat stores on notes and harmonies in the forest before entering her syllable den for the long winter? What’s the musical equivalent of beetle grubs? Those are key – lots of nutritious fat.

Don’t worry. A couple more gripes, then I’ll let you go, Laura.

“Much like their good friends Grizzly Bear, Beach House have made testy, breathy cooing and harmonising into an artform scant seen since the days of the Gregorian chant.”

You mean an art form scant HEARD since the days of Gregorian chant? Seeing someone cooing and harmonizing usually just amounts to seeing someone making fish lips. And if you were able to pluck a contemporary example of it so easily, don’t you think it’s rather likely there’s an ample store between present day and the heyday of the Franks?

“the odd lyrical cliché remains – as on ‘Better Times’, where Victoria questions, “How much longer can you play with fire/Before you turn into liar?” a tad gratingly. But it’s a tiny niggle.”

If it’s a tiny niggle, then why did you feel the need to mention it? If you’d cut out your slight discomfort with the word “liar” rhyming with “fire,” you might have cut your review to a more manageable 900 words. At 938, it is a tad grating, you know. But it’s also a lot of fun. Thanks for racking one up for the girls, Laura.