Beach House Review

Everything the band would spend twenty years refining is here in outline: a wheezing organ, slow slide guitar figures, a preset drum pattern and a low, unhurried voice singing melodies that circle rather than climb. Master of None is the one that got the attention and it is a genuinely lovely piece of writing, all descending organ and an ache that the recording quality cannot flatten. Apple Orchard is nearly as good.

The rest of the album is closer to atmosphere than song, and the fidelity does not help: everything is dim, the drum machine is thin, and the high end has been rolled off to the point where the record sounds like it is playing in another room. That murk is charming for twenty minutes and wearing across forty. Worth hearing for how complete the identity already is, and worth understanding as a starting point rather than a destination. Almost everything they did afterwards is better than this and they got there fast.