Review Summary: What makes this fragile world go round?
For a band so meticulous about details, there should be no mistaking the release date of their latest effort coinciding with the end of summer and the coming of autumn. Beach House's music always had an undeniably autumnal feel, evoking everything from wilting leaves to the bittersweet fresh chill of the ever-earlier nightfall to the fleeting heart of migratory birds.
The sense of looming death that autumn represents looms large over much of the lyrics on 'Depression Cherry'. Right from the opener 'Levitation', which speaks of 'You will grow too quick, then you will get over it'. This feel of transience is then best encapsulated the first single 'Sparks', which quite literally describes fading firecracker sparks. Like the typical Beach House song, 'Sparks' clocks in at the usual margin of 4-5 minutes, providing the listener just enough time to sink into the soundscape provided by the droning keys and insistent drum machine beats before falling away all too soon, much like how a spark may entrance you and then leave you feeling simultaneously enriched and at a loss when it burns away.
Being of French ancestry, one gets the feeling Beach House vocalist and co-composer Victoria Legrand spends her musical career trying to capture the essence of 'la petite mort'. Each Beach House live performance gradually warms the listener, wrapping layers of intimacy around you until you are totally taken into their world, climaxing usually with a grandiose album closer track such as 'Days of Candy', 'Irene' or 'Take Care', finally bursting, and leaving you gasping for breath.
'What makes this fragile world go round' asks Legrand on 'Space Song'. It's an answer none of us are ever likely to know, all we can ever do is enjoy the maddening beauty of it all.
