For a few years now, Baltimore duo Beach House have been the sort of indie heavyweights that fight in an arena filled with Arcade Fire, M83 and other darling ambient pop bands. The release of their critically-acclaimed Teen Dream further cemented their position as such: Pitchfork went gaga, then Pitchfork readers went gaga soon after, proving for one and all that this band made good music. (That’s how it works, right?) Point being, Beach House is a very good band, no doubt. Their brand of gauzy dreampop, laced with a peculiarly pretty gloom, lends their music a certain sad beauty that transcends most of their contemporaries. Teen Dream soared and bloomed with the naïve, introspective, perpetually lovelorn intensity of, well, teenaged dreams. The music on Teen Dream was succulent, but more often than not, the lyrics were the kind of self-important first-world problems that gives the hipster world (and first-world countries) a bad name.
“Myth”, the prettiest song from May 2012’s Bloom, is no different. The music is a lush sonic meadow: it’s as climactic, cinematic and charismatic as we’ve come to expect from Beach House. Spectacularly beautiful, haunting and repetitive floods of music lull you into musical contentment as Victoria Legrand beseeches you to help her make it. But make what? It’s unclear. Probably some ambiguously hipster thing, like tragically failed love or intense personal drama, which of course normal people never go through, right?
Verdict: Block out the words and enjoy the music. You won’t wince at the pretentiousness, and you get some insanely sweet music out of it. Win-win!
-Neeharika
Top Five Records 
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