The official website of Beach House, the four-year-old, two-person ""dream-pop"" duo, brings you to a single image of the two acting like a pair of misfit, ironically swanky teens. You can't see their faces. There is a sculpture of a head with multiple faces in between them, and Victoria Legrand's hand is tucked into her pants next to her belt buckle, where ""GIT SUM!"" has been MSPainted in. To boot, the three links on the page—aside from those accessing a new Teen Dream single—are miniscule and hidden. As a whole, this is uncannily indicative of the unabashed timidity and awkward social remoteness Beach House purvey through their music.
They want you to visit their site, but they're not ones to share anything personal except their music, which Beach House still keeps distanced from their subject and, as a result, their listeners. However, where Beach House have been introverted, or awkwardly expressive at best, in the past, they allow their sound to swell on Teen Dream. Yet it's only to extend a small personal bubble of warmth around them as an unspoken invitation to listeners, and if you're lucky enough to let yourself get lost in their adolescent, dreamy landscapes, they provide a hearth to protect from their superficially icy exterior.
And for those who can't break through that mental barrier, Beach House keep distant by transporting listeners from one icy setting to another, as if you are looking into a series of engrossingly vivid snow globes. The album opens gradually with ""Zebra,"" as if the listener is waking up in medias res, only the action turns out to be a beautiful scene. The opener also uses uncharacteristic, yet bluntly appropriate imagery—""Any way you run, you run before us / Black and white horse arching among us,"" which Legrand's vocals and melodies drag back to a more fitting igloo to watch the stampede from, only promising to follow the creatures later when a comfortable distance has been made.
Their commitments waver throughout, not even willing to let their adolesence out of sight on the final track, the standout ""Take Care."" It uses the witty double entendre of the title to half commit to their audience and half say ""see you around,"" as the song bursts open for the welcoming chorus, ""I'll take care of you / If you ask me to / In a year or two.""
What allows them to create such intrigue while remaining unobtrusive is that amazingly coy sense that they want you—subjects within songs as well as listeners—to get lost in their music and persons as much as they are. The production is often swimming with simplicity that is impossible to overthink, and the vocals are just as often swirling around you in mesmerizing fashion, as if they are tricking any overthinkers into focusing until their greater awareness and perceptions are dizzyingly fogged out of the equation and all that is left is the music's buried emotional pull.
To their credit, they're beginning to rely on this factor less and less with each record as they learn to toe the line of accessibility. It's getting to the point where you can expect an upcoming album to produce crossover success with a worthy single. But not yet, and in this case, that's a good thing because their current identity defies superficial aesthetics ironically.
As it remains, Teen Dream offers up poignant yet simple melodies, but as far as overall accessibility, the hooks are buried beneath piles of snow, keeping listeners content with the overall pleasantness if they're not willing to engage in the music, though it's begging to be uncovered and share warmth.
The key to this hidden depth is the simplicity with which they have finally learned to expand. ""Used to Be,"" the album's first single, carries the apparent theme of quarter-note melodies more effectively than anything else on the album. For while the song is the first thing they've ever made that feels almost giddy, the melody hangs suspended in half time. The simplicity is so blunt at times that it makes the overall breathtaking effects inexplicable.
A large part of it is the vocals that blanket each precise yet dreamy melody, only getting ruffled on scandalously upbeat tracks like the glowing ""Norway."" But even more crucial to their appeal is the lack of pompous ambition that results from their entire scope, from the basic production to the nonconfrontational lyricisms.
In this way, Teen Dream is cohesive and consistent, two marks of an album not likely to disappear from playlists anytime soon. And if you find the overall aesthetic boring, then you're not getting lost in their ""dream"" as intended. But Beach House have finally made their dreams enticing, which makes Teen Dream the warmest jacket you can find for winter's icy demeanor, even if its superficial aesthetics can be so chilling you can see the breath of fresh air the album is.
