Baltimore, Maryland is the 12th most dangerous city in America; also, they had a real serious syphilis problem a few years back. Just when you\u2019re convinced that Baltimore is really just the red-headed stepchild of Philadelphia, which is really just the red-headed stepchild of New York City, a charming Baltimorean indie duo called Beach House quietly delivers one of the most deliciously mysterious records of the year. This is more good news for a city that appears to be in the early stages of a cultural and artistic boom. <\/p>\n
Together, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand have orchestrated a sophomore record of gorgeous and haunting proportions. Devotion<\/i> is eleven tracks of the most reverb-soaked and dream-inspiring pop nuggets you\u2019re likely to hear all year. Using only guitars, keyboards, and a silky smooth set of female pipes, Scally and Legrand have drenched their material in lush and momentous arrangements, making the record seem like it\u2019s covered with layers and layers of meticulous orchestration played by a full symphony. <\/p>\n
Losing oneself in the stunning arrangements makes it easy to overlook the quality of songwriting that Devotion<\/i> presents to its listeners. Nevertheless, if the \u201corchestration\u201d were stripped away from all of the tracks on the record, what would remain would be eleven skillfully penned pop songs \u2013 including one from indie super hero Daniel Johnson \u2013 that could hold up just as well using just solo voice and piano. <\/p>\n
This disc makes for perfect nighttime listening. When Victoria Legrand opens that mouth of hers and lets those dusty notes fall onto the doubled vocal track that\u2019s pushed way up high in the mix, you get the sense she\u2019s singing only to you. If the record falls short anywhere, though, it\u2019s in the lack of dynamic change throughout. Perhaps this is intentional so as not disrupt their attempt to surround the listener in the calm darkness. Devotion <\/i>is a competent and well-executed record where Beach House has created a fantasy dream world, a world filled with subtle melody and spaciousness. It invites the listener in for late night tea and a cigarette; it\u2019s the most hospitable album to hit the shelves in a very long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":29312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8190],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-40862","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-beach-house","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40862"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40862"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}