Beach House - Teen Dream

So, yeah, it's been a while.

An explanation/excuse: I've been putting together PhD applications (actually, only one, but still) and it's not that I didn't have time, but more that my mind has been elsewhere. I'm hoping to get back to blogging a little, though I expect I'll be doing less and writing more about a variety of different topics rather than just sticking to music. We'll see how it goes though.

I guess the other thing is that I haven't really been keeping track of what's going on in music...

Beach House's first two albums s/t [2006] and Devotion [2008] really didn't do anything for me. Teen Dream, the third release by Beach House, really couldn't have come along at a better time for me, personally. The album evokes some of the nostalgia of those John Hughes movies like Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, or even Risky Business (not a John Hughes movie, I know, but it feels like it should be) where you just know that things are going to work out. That no matter how far behind the proverbial 8-ball the protagonist(s) get, everyone is going to be happy and learn the lessons that they need to learn.

Teen Dream is just about the perfect title for the album. In conjunction with the whole John Hughes thing, the album just sort of washes over you, one song blending into another (and you may, in fact, not remember listening to the whole album). Nothing on the album really stands out, which is not to say there aren't outstanding moments, because there are on just about every song, but the way the album flows bringing you up so gently and down so slowly you never really notice. I'm imagining this is the way heroin feels. Probably not.

But even if it isn't as good as heroin, it is a terrific album, and something I've listened to more from start to finish then I have just about anything else in the past year. Teen Dream never really deviates from that washed over ambient psychedelic sound, and they have enough material that it works, but not so much that you get sick of it. And then there's the closing track, "Take Care" that is like the Notebook level romantic. Even if you're not a huge music dork, there's a pretty good chance you're going to like this album.