Not Many Experts

Beach House’s latest, “Teen Dream” has been a receiving a well deserved hammering from my iTunes ever since it inadvertently tripped its way into my computer at the end of last year. With the actual physical and legal (and thus a bit less exciting) album dropping on Monday, I thought that now was as good a time as any to let you know that, if you don’t get yourself properly acquainted with Teen Dream, you’re going to be missing out on an album that would have easily fitted well into the upper levels of last year’s end of year lists. Actually, I did see someone who had got the leak and didn’t realise it wasn’t out until January who had put it in their “Best Albums of 2009” list. I guess that tells you all you need to know, really.

For those of you who aren’t happy with the casual and lazy reassurance that lots of other people like it, Beach House are the calmly retreating waves of woozily brilliant dream-pop that are being over-run by the scores of the ADD-affected synth-pop bands who are quickly becoming the flotsam and jetsam in this particular over-laboured analogy. And whilst it might be the case that Beach House are (quietly) railing against the mooted “sound of 2010” (synths, keyboards, infantile yelps), this only serves to single them out as effortlessly original. Most importantly, though, whether in the context of 2010 or not, the songs speak for themselves with a hazy strength and pop genius that underlies their placid composition. For this reason alone, “Teen Dream” is an album that promises to out-live hastily prepared end of year round ups.