If listening to Beach House’s Teen Dream felt like throwing open the shades and letting light into a dusty sunroom, Bloom revisited that same space at twilight, still opulent and opaque but with new scope. Alex Scally’s sparkling guitar leads and Victoria Legrand’s cyclone of a voice are instantly recognizable, but they’re distorted in mystery. Bloom is a seductive album that has little to do with romance or sexual gratification; its characters feel the tug of adventure, of sensations and phenomena they can’t quite describe.
And while Bloom boasts some of the most indelible melodies in Beach House’s discography—the twinkling “Lazuli,” the extended sigh of “Other People”—it’s most notable as a collection of remarkable sounds. “Myth” opens with that plonking bell, cracked like an egg after two stiff shakes; the drums on “Wild” foam and splash like the ocean around your ankles; “The Hours” clocks you with that sneering riff, a slow-motion punk moment. These little moments may not sound like much, but they end up feeling like dashes of spice added to a favourite home-cooked meal. There’s something unexpected lurking in every familiar bite.
Bloom is presented as an album which transcends the boundaries of genre, taste or subjectivity. It is described as a work of religious mission, opening the eyes of any who venture into it. But I’m indifferent to the quality of the music . Many claim that no indie or mainstream music released by the turn of the decade a few months ago was left untouched musically by Bloom’s dream pop, which epitomizes the sound of Beach House it’s synth arpeggios, fuzzy yet discreetly mixed guitars and ethereal, psychedelic vocals layered upon dreamy atmospheric sounds.
Dream pop is not just a genre. It’s an all-encompassing description: Bloom truly sounds like a dream feels. The duo behind the album created a psychedelic, half-conscious atmosphere shoegazed (a production style which tries to merge and effect the instruments until the different instruments on a mix are almost indistinguishable) to the point that the texture feels barely there, and yet impenetrable as a solid wall of sound; an enormous, slow moving, audible cloud. Unusually, the album benefits from each song sounding similar enough that each track fades into another seamlessly, which only adds to the unavoidable dream comparison: as a dream is an ambiguous, surreal montage of faded events and ideas, as is Bloom.
The influence of this album is hard to deny. Just a few tracks in, the poppy, synth arpeggios which are ever present. Then the ethereal, contralto female vocals, The trippy, heavily reverberated instrumentation and vocals the jangly guitars on Wherever You Go.
On the other hand, there are certainly arguments suggesting that the influence of Bloom has been exaggerated. The album cover for Bloom, its prime visual representation, is instantly evocative of that of the self-titled album by The XX, released in 2009, or Turn on the Bright Lightsby Interpol, released 2002.
So, did Beach House simply steal their sound and aesthetic? Of course not. For the most part, Beach House reinvented dream pop for a new generation, with adding a new, even more ethereal touch which has placed its hand on every indie pop or rock record released since. Late 2000s psych-pop may belong in the same category of music as Bloom,but it’s no coincidence that Beach House are immediately distinct from their contemporaries, no matter the similarities.
The Fat Angel Sings 