Beach House
Studio album by
Beach House
ReleasedOctober 3, 2006 (2006-10-03)
Genre
Length36:38
Label
Beach House chronology
Beach House
(2006)		 Devotion
(2008)
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic73/100[2]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[3]
Almost Cool7/10[4]
Drowned in Sound8/10[5]
Dusted Magazinefavorable[6]
LAS Magazine8/10[7]
Pitchfork8.1/10[8]
Prefix Magazine6.0/10[9]
Stylus MagazineB+[10]

Beach House is the debut studio album by American dream pop duo Beach House. It was released on October 3, 2006, by Carpark Records in North America, Bella Union in Europe, and Mistletone Records in Australia. The album received mostly positive reviews from music critics.

The album had a remastered reissue in 2010 by HeartBreakBeat Records with a run limited to 1,000 copies on black vinyl.[11] In 2012, a pressing on special edition white vinyl was released through Bella Union.[12] In 2015, the band self-released a white cassette during the Depression Cherry tour. As of April 2012 Beach House has sold 24,000 copies in United States according to Nielsen Soundscan.[13]

The album was recorded on a 4-track over a two-day period in Scally's basement.[14][15]

Composition

The album has been described as an indie pop record with "shoegazer textures".[16][17] Almost Cool said the band created an album of "lo-fi, hazy summer dream pop".[18] The opening track, "Saltwater", is a lazy, drifting song built on scratchy, low-key synthetic beats that got "flooded with softly spreading guitar distortion and incandescent organ".[17] "Master Of None" has a "more radiant synths and dreamy guitar rolling out over a slightly funkier rhythm."[18] "Auburn And Ivory" is a siren-song of 60's psychedelia and classical influences that's a duller, more stoney take on The Rolling Stones' "Play With Fire".[17] "Childhood" is "the most upbeat song on the album, and it's one of the warmest."[17]

Critical reception

The album received mostly positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 73, based on 14 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[19] Pitchfork said the album evoked a "recipe of fairground waltzes, ghosted lullabies, and woodland hymnals" and compared the work of the duo to Mazzy Star, Spiritualized and Slowdive.[20] AllMusic said the album is "one of the most mystical indie-pop surprises to arrive in 2006."[16] Giving the album a positive review, LAS Magazine said the album was "made for gray days indoors or late August afternoons spent lying in golden fields staring at blue skies," while comparing it to Yo La Tengo's album And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out.[17] Almost Cool said "it sounds like a late summer album, but it's just dark enough that I bet it will sound nice looking out the window to a dusting of snow on the ground as well."[18] Dusted Magazine said it is "a dream of an album."[21] Delusions of Adequacy said the album "is the perfect accompaniment for an introspective day, or night, of watching the globules of a lava lamp slowly float and sink."[19]

Accolades

The album was included at number sixteen in Pitchfork's list of the top 50 albums of 2006.[22]

Controversy

The band adapted "Snowdon Song" by 1970s folk group Tony, Caro and John, changing the key, the time signature, and the lyrics and renaming it "Lovelier Girl" with the trio given no attribution. Four years after the album's release, the trio contacted them. After amicable discussions on copyright, the authorship of the "Lovelier Girl" version of the song is now jointly attributed to Beach House and Tony Doré of the trio.[23]

"So we settled everything with them and they're fine and we're fine. We made sure all the necessary royalties go to them and all that stuff, and they're in the index as the co-writers," Scally says. "We had no idea on our first record that's how that thing worked. You don't know anything when you're just kids in a basement making a record."

The song "Master of None" was sampled by Canadian singer The Weeknd for his song "The Party & The After Party" off his 2011 debut mixtape House of Balloons.[24] The song was also used in the Netflix show of the same name,[25] as well as featuring in Miranda July's 2011 German-American drama film The Future.[26]

Track listing

All lyrics are written by Victoria Legrand; all music is composed by Beach House, except where noted

No.TitleLength
1."Saltwater"2:55
2."Tokyo Witch"3:42
3."Apple Orchard"4:31
4."Master of None"3:19
5."Auburn and Ivory"4:30
6."Childhood"3:35
7."Lovelier Girl" (Beach House, Tony Doré)3:02
8."House on the Hill"3:14
9."Heart and Lungs" (hidden track "Rain in Numbers" starts at 5:25)7:50
Total length:36:38

Personnel

Beach House

Production

  • Rob Girardi – recording, mixing
  • Adam Cooke – recording
  • Rusty Santos – mastering
  • Liz Flyntz – photography

References

  1. ↑ Pitchfork Staff (October 8, 2019). "The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s". Pitchfork. Retrieved May 6, 2023. Beach House are nothing if not devoted to a mood. On their first two records, that atmosphere was one of lo-fi wistfulness...
  2. ↑ Metacritic score
  3. ↑ Beach House | Beach House | AllMusic AllMusic - album review by MacKenzie Wilson.
  4. ↑ Beach House - Beach House - almost cool music review Archived 2007-09-26 at the Wayback Machine Almost Cool - album review.
  5. ↑ Beach House - Beach House / Releases / Releases // Drowned In Sound Archived 2012-10-07 at the Wayback Machine Drowned in Sound - album review by Jordan Dowling.
  6. ↑ Dusted Reviews: Beach House - Beach House Archived 2013-04-04 at the Wayback Machine Dusted magazine - album review by Bernardo Rondeau.
  7. ↑ LAS magazine | music, media, art, culture, life, everything. - Reviews Archived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine Lost at Sea - album review by Peter Lindblad.
  8. ↑ Beach House: Beach House | Album Reviews | Pitchfork Pitchfork Media - album review by Mark Pytlik.
  9. ↑ Album Review: Beach House - Beach House | Prefix Prefix Magazine - album review by Jeff Klingman.
  10. ↑ Beach House - Beach House - Review - Stylus Magazine Archived November 28, 2007, at the Wayback Machine Stylus Magazine - album review by Liz Colville.
  11. ↑ "Beach House reissue". GORILLA VS. BEAR. 24 February 2010. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  12. ↑ "Beach House "Beach House" and "Devotion" available on vinyl | Bella Union". bellaunion.com. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  13. ↑ Lipshutz, Jason (20 April 2012). "Beach House: The Story Behind 'Bloom' and Indie's Most Reliable Duo". Billboard. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
  14. ↑ Matt Diehl (February 26, 2010). "Hot Band: Beach House". Spin Magazine. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  15. ↑ Joe Colly (February 15, 2010). "Beach House". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  16. 1 2 "Beach House - Beach House | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 "LAS magazine | music, media, art, culture, life, everything. - Reviews - -". www.lostatsea.net. Archived from the original on 2012-02-07. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  18. 1 2 3 "Beach House - Beach House - almost cool music review". www.almostcool.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  19. 1 2 Beach House by Beach House, retrieved 2017-05-10
  20. ↑ Pytlik, Mark (2006-10-11). "Beach House: Beach House | Album Reviews". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2012-01-15.
  21. ↑ "Dusted Reviews: Beach House - Beach House". www.dustedmagazine.com. Archived from the original on 2013-04-04. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  22. ↑ Staff, Pitchfork (2006-12-19). "Staff Lists: Top 50 Albums of 2006 | Features". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 2016-01-01. Retrieved 2012-01-15.
  23. ↑ Farah, Troy (2013-04-04). "Beach House Has Some Beef with Volkswagen". Phoenix New Times. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  24. ↑ "The Weeknd: House of Balloons". PopMatters. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  25. ↑ "Aziz Ansari on the Music of "Master of None": Father John Misty, Aphex Twin, Arthur Russell, and More | Pitchfork". pitchfork.com. 9 November 2015. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  26. ↑ "The 10 Best Beach House Songs". Stereogum. 2013-07-10. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
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