Interview: Beach House

By Penny Wong  •  in Features
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There are so many things to love about Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand’s Beach House: From the Baltimore duo’s knack for timeless, scintillating dream pop, to its second and latest record, Teen Dream, which weaves a spellbinding canvas of guitar, organ and breathy vocals to equally exultant and melancholic effect. We love them loads and managed to score an interview with Victoria ahead of their Laneway gig in Singapore…

Text Min Chen

What’s the best way to enjoy a Beach House live experience?
That’s up to you to decide! Have an open mind. Bring your personal experience to the show and see what happens.

We will! 2010 was a great year for you two, especially with the release of Teen Dream…
It was a good year. A hard year. A long year of touring, performing the album. When we finished recording Teen Dream, we felt we had achieved as close to our vision of it as possible. What was your vision? Behind any record an artist makes, hopefully there is a great deal of passion and fervor. And that’s what we had. Tension, obsession, fantasy, darkness… We continue to tap into those forces today. It takes a lot of intensity from you.

So what did you learn from the making of it?
We’ve learnt from every record. Each one could not exist without the prior one. Devotion was an expansion, and Teen Dream is an expansion. Each collection of songs – or family as we call our albums – is an evolution. The next record we write will be an expansion or a diversion in a different direction. We stand confidently behind each album. We are very in tune with the natural rhythm of our creative cycles. Touring is a part of our process: it inspires us, kills us, makes us stronger, makes us desire…

And how do you feel the band has grown in between albums and tours?
Both our records are products of heavy touring and emotional buildup. The band continues to grow in every way each tour we do. We learn a great deal about our music, where we were, where we want to go, where we never want to go again. We’ve pulled more imagination from the sounds we use and we’ve gotten better at extrapolating from very little. We want the biggest horizon out of the thinnest line. As an artist you grow in the sense that you learn how to construct in new ways using the same materials. And hopefully, those ways excite you and continue to show you new inspiring forms.

Sounds good. Apart from music, what is it that bonds you and Alex together?
Best friendship, minds, fantasy, love of objects, crap, mutual inspiration and hot dogs…

For all your Beach House goodness, check out www.myspace.com/beachhousemusic.