Beach House

Tickets €22.50 (booking fees may apply)

Beach House started out life as a recording project. Yet, rather than using multi-tracking to build 'grand' songs, they stuck to the simplicity of their set-up: organ, programmed drums, slide guitar. Beach House is a duo not a couple, as they often point out from Baltimore, USA. Built on the vocals and organ of Victoria Legrand and the atmospheric slide-guitar of Alex Scally, they bear frequent comparisons to Nico and Mazzy Star, and are heavily influenced by Neil Young and the films of David Lynch. "That's very much what the 'Beach House' feel is: going off to a different world," Scally explained. "It's not really a vacation; vacation for me is when you go away, but you’re still thinking about all the things you've left behind”. “It's a way to challenge ourselves: What do you do when it's just the two of you?" Legrand said to Pitchfork. After a year as a recording project, Beach House began playing around Baltimore and recorded their 2006 self-titled debut in the space of two days. Though made without a label, the band was signed by Carpark Records. Beach House soon became a 'blog band,' the internet's embrace symbolized by the ever-influential Pitchfork, who awarded the band their 'best new music' tag and scored Beach House an 8.1. In 2008, Beach House released their second album, Devotion, a more dynamic set whose songs were, Scally claimed, "incredibly high in intensity," born of bottled-up emotions from touring and increased creative tensions between the two. The album found more critical love, and the band's fanbase continued to grow, aided by tours with Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear. In 2009, Beach House signed to Sub Pop Records, and the first fruits of that union were 2010's impressive Teen Dream. The album's title, Legrand explained, "described the feeling that [they] had [making it]: youthful and obsessed, completely inspired by everything in this overwhelming, irrational, passionate way." Recorded in a converted church in upstate New York, the album summoned a sense of grandeur beyond the hazy mood music of the band's first two records, and was summarily received with critical rapture; named album of the year by Gorilla vs. Bear and in the Top 10 by Pitchfork, Time, Billboard, Stereogum, and the NME. In 2012, the duo returned with Bloom, an LP that reaffirmed Beach House's status as an important indie band and critical dream pop darlings. "We know we're an internet band," Scally has offered. "That's how we've always been: real small, but with really devoted fans." Unmissable!