Depression Cherry
Sub Pop
Dream Pop act Beach House have been using a combination of
male and female vocals with pop hooks and ethereal backgrounds to delight
listeners for four albums now. Their most recent record,
“Bloom” saw the band
reach new levels of popularity with a set of songs that showed off brilliant
syncopation between its two founding members and the achy longing of songwriter
Victoria Legrand. The somber tones were sure to be continued when Beach House
announced the title of its forthcoming record, “Depression Cherry.” The newest
record from the Maryland duo has its moments of dainty instrumental elegance,
but these highlights fail to overcompensate for the downright forgettable nature
of the majority of these songs.
The Beach House charm is built on delicate and slow ballads
and “Depression Cherry” is full of them. The spacy reverberated guitars that
lead the listener through tracks like the opener “Levitation” and “Space Song”
are relaxing, but hold a strain of liveliness that keeps the tracks catchy.
Where Beach House’s prior records succeed is where “Depression Cherry” fails.
Tracks off “Teen Dream” and “Bloom” would take these slow burner tracks and
take the listener though different sets of dynamic ranges as tracks would
develop while the band’s reverberated pop hooks were given enormous space to
shine. Instrumental layers would be applied and the original piece that drew
the listener into the track at the beginning would end as an afterthought which
faded into the texture of a larger instrumental track. Beach House are masters
of creating a seemingly massive space then filling in that space with lavish
texture and scintillation. On “Depression Cherry” these opening guitar or synth
pieces are left to dangle out at the front of the track for its entirety. A lot
of these piece lack the strength to stand on their own and are not even able to
be supported by a stronger pop hook or chorus. The vocal layers and harmonies
are not as enticing as they were prior and by track five this not only becomes
painfully evident, but tracks become downright predictable.
Many of the tracks like “10:37” and “Wildflower” are so slow
that they keep the listener in anticipation for a new element that never comes.
No added instrumentation or shift in tempo or mood, just continued falsetto from
Legrand until the track ends. The songs on “Depression Cherry” lack vision and
the subtle variation that made Beach House so successful before. In fact, most
of these tracks lack any sort of variation or jaunt at all. The album exists on
one setting with no deviation and by the end the album feels like short
collection of experiments within one limited sound.
Beach House have given us four reasons to expect more than
the average dream pop contained within “Depression Cherry”, making this release
a disappointment. The album is not without moments of gorgeous and spacey pop
bliss. Where it disappoints is it feels like Beach House creates this
environment to exist in without filling in the space. The album is in black and
white rather than color which is a travesty for a Beach House record. The
lyrical themes may be drastic enough for Beach House to create a more
depressing record, but the music does not reflect that in any way. These
instrumentals at their core are not dramatically different enough from their
earlier work for any type of “new direction” to be a valid excuse. This leaves the listener with a collection of
songs that become indistinguishable and the listener without much of a desire
to distinguish the tracks anyway.
5.5/10
-
TJ Kliebhan
8/19/2015
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