I only go to the party to pluck the feathers off fallen birds

“Beach House is an amazing band that manages to sound like a glass box filled with sand, metal, rain and thunder.” - Rodarte

Victoria Legrand, takes a minute to compose herself, looks out at the audience from between parted bows of shaggy brown hair, and quietly speaks into her microphone; “2009 is going to be a good year,” she laughs, “and that’s about as political as I’ll ever get.” This, of course, comes as no surprise. Hailing from East Baltimore, Victoria and her bandmate Alex Scally make-up Beach House, a band that has managed to create a universe of sound that is so dream-like and far removed from the rest of the world that you would be hard pressed to picture either of them doing something so common place as marking a ballot.
The duo (backed by a rotating drummer) played Richards on Richards on Sunday, January 25th, filling the cavernous space with their simultaneously lo-fi and multi-layered ethereal music. Given that this was Beach House’s third time playing in Vancouver, I had presumed that it must have been a fairly well anticipated show. Despite this, and tickets having been sold out a week ago at Zulu Record, the room seemed sparely populated and mostly by the kind of people whom you expect to see at a poetry slam rather than comprising the audience of a band that, according to the BBC, makes music “which would seem at home in any independently made 1960's love film fitted snugly at the end as one lover died whilst the other wept uncontrollably,”(David McGuire, 2008) but on second thought, what demographic would that imply?
After the disappointing effort by their neo-grunge and vaguely folk influenced opening band, Johnny and the Moon, had finally subsided (don’t openeners usually play for thirty minutes, tops, not fifty-five?). Beach House unassumingly made their way to their respective instruments, took a minute for some easy banter regarding their choice to end the tour in Vancouver; apparently they kind of like it here. And finally, without warning, launched into their first song. The set included a number of songs off of both their first an second albums, including the haunting “Wedding Bells” off of their 2008 sophomore release, Devotion. What kind of wedding they intend to celebrate can only be pictured in the most distorted version of a Grimes Brother’s fairytale, where the bride wore a tattered dress of lace and saltwater, and the groom whispered softly of their inevitable funeral.
Legrand’s voice is so powerful, working less as a conduit for lyrics and more as an instrument in and of itself, that one could easily lose track of Scally’s delicate guitar plucking. Despite what could be cynically interpreted as a depressed Hawaiian strings ensemble on Quaaludes, Beach House’s performance bore closer resemblance to a seasonal shift, your parents’ fading black and white photos, a chill swirling through the rafters, and summer’s warm, hypnotic remains. Legrand sways over her organ, alternating between peering at Scally and nodding affirmatively. Notes are occasionally and characteristically missteped, and the shows wares on much like this for the new half-hour. Half way through the performance, the audience was privy to a couple songs off of their upcoming album (so far, no known title), including Used to be, the single. It seems as though fans can anticipate a lighter, more hooky Beach House for the coming years, but fortunately, one that still maintains their distinctive ephemeral quality.
To see Beach House live is to be completely enveloped in a hazy nostalgia, you are constantly racking your mind trying to decipher and categorize whatever images are floating through it. You listen harder, get completely lost in personal history, and finally resign yourself to the fact that what stands before you are merely two very talented, creative people, who haven’t reinvented memory or love, but just started writing songs on winter nights in Baltimore.