Beach House

The duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, Beach House is defined by the hypnotic interplay between Legrand’s velvety voice and keyboards and Scally’s rippling guitar. Over the years, the pair’s style moved from the charmingly lo-fi sound of 2006′s self-titled debut to the polished, majestic approach of 2012′s Bloom. On their later albums, Beach House incorporated wider-ranging sounds and textures into their swooning, mysterious music, folding elements of psych and sleek electronics into 2018′s 7 and imbuing 2022′s Once Twice Melody with lavish strings and acoustic warmth. With nearly every release, Beach House revealed new possibilities within dream pop.
Legrand and Scally met in Baltimore’s indie rock scene and formed Beach House in 2004. They began releasing songs soon after, including “Apple Orchard,” which appeared on Pitchfork’s Infinite Mixtape MP3 series in August 2006. That October, Carpark released the duo’s hazy self-titled debut album, which Beach House recorded in Scally’s basement on a four-track recorder. Beach House earned favorable reviews as well as comparisons to Nico and Mazzy Star. Early in 2007, Scally and Legrand began working on their second album, writing the songs they recorded at Lord Baltimore Recording Studio over a couple of months. Arriving in February 2008, Devotion presented a slightly cleaner-sounding version of the style Beach House introduced on their debut. It also became their first release to appear on the Billboard 200 Albums chart, peaking at number 195. In 2009, the duo contributed a version of Queen’s “Play the Game” to the iTunes Store release of the 2009 Red Hot Organization compilation Dark Was the Night, while Legrand lent her vocals to the Grizzly Bear song “Two Weeks.”
Following the lengthy Devotion tour, Legrand and Scally worked with producer Chris Coady on their Sub Pop debut, Teen Dream. Released in January 2010, the album continued to refine the duo’s sound. It debuted in the Top 50 of the Billboard 200 and was Beach House’s first record to chart in the U.K. The pair built on Teen Dream’s success with May 2012′s Bloom, a unified sound and vision meant to be experienced as an entire album rather than a collection of songs. Recorded with Coady at Tornillo Texas’ Sonic Ranch, Beach House’s fourth album was their most polished yet, earning widespread acclaim and entering the Billboard 200 at number seven. In 2013, Beach House released Forever Still, a short concert film recorded around the area where they recorded Bloom.
Two years later, Legrand and Scally issued a pair of albums that featured co-production by Coady and returned to the simplicity of their earlier work. Arriving in August 2015, Depression Cherry was recorded in Bogalusa, Louisiana’s Studio in the Country and boasted a 24-part choir on one song. Like Bloom, the album was a Top Ten hit in the U.S. and also fared well commercially throughout Europe. That October, Beach House released Thank Your Lucky Stars, a darker, more hushed set of songs that reached number 39 on the U.S. charts. In June 2017, the compilation B-Sides and Rarities gathered together 14 tracks that included the previously unreleased “Chariot” and “Baseball Diamond.” To make their seventh album, Beach House took a different approach. Working with Sonic Boom and live drummer James Barone, Legrand and Scally went into the studio to record songs as soon as they were finished. The results were 2018′s aptly named 7, a wide-ranging album that found the duo delving into sleeker electronic pop as well as acoustic instrumentation. The set reached number 20 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart.
Beach House kicked off the 2020s with a pair of scoring projects. First, they composed the music for trailers screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, then provided the scores to the short film Marin’s Dreams and the interactive art installation Omega Mart, both projects of the design collective Meow Wolf. In November 2021, the first chapter of the duo’s eighth album, Once Twice Melody, appeared, with the arrival of further volumes culminating in February 2022′s physical release. Featuring string arrangements by David Campbell, Once Twice Melody was produced by Scally and Legrand and found them spanning electro dream pop to folky influences over its double-album length. ~ Heather Phares