Bella Union Vinilo y CD

Review: Beach House return with another inevitably washed out dream pop pipe-fantasy - and perhaps a magnum opus, being 18 tracks long - 'Once Twice Melody'. We can confirm the LP scales a more minimal and wondrous sound than their career-definer, 'Depression Cherry'. As ever, noir slow jams canopy an ever-ghostlier vocal palette on lead singles like 'Over And Over' and 'Superstar'. Even a live string ensemble was used in its recording. Stonkingly, it comes in various limited-edition formats. One, the "gold" edition, includes a gold and clear 2xLP record in a gold-embossed, hinged box. The "silver" edition is housed in a silver embossed black sleeve. Oh, and there's a cassette version too, for all you indie heads out there.

Review: Long-time indie darlings and American dream pop duo Beach House barely ever put a foot wrong, and you won't find a misstep on this, their fifth album, either. Depression Cherry was co-produced by the band with Chris Coady and first came back in 2015. It was written over two years before that and saw the band return to a more simplistic sound with fewer instruments, tunes constructed around a main melody and live drums featuring less than in the past. This was in response to having enlarged their sound as the venues they played grew ever bigger, but dialing it back in was a good move if you ask us.

Review: 2022's stunning album Once Twice Melody was a fine example of Beach House doing what they do best - living bang up to that name, with intimate-but epic instrumentation falling somewhere between surf-y jangle and grand shoegaze. 'Become' is definitely on a similar tip, and as such feels much like an extension of the long form.
Dig a little deeper, though, and scratches begin to show. While the full-length record represented Beach House reaching for the stars, or at least the moon, and stepping into the role of festival headliners, here the sense of pure confidence and occasion is less pronounced. That may not be a bad thing, mind, because while Once came across like a finished article, refined and prepared, things here seem somehow rawer, as though we're sitting in on a session as oppose to getting the signed off product.

Review: It may be debatable whether B-sides still exist in the here and now, yet beneath the very slightly prosaic title of this compendium lurks the work of an outfit who - despite having essentially surfed along a very definitive wave of sun-dappled languour since their inception - are capable of delivering offcuts that are every bit the equal of most folks' hits. True, the Spinal Tap insult of 'the musical growth rate of this band cannot even be charted' could be applied to Beach House, but when their catalogue over the ten years of their existence esentially consists of a variety of themes on opiated bliss, we're only too happy to embark on the ride.