Beach House

Beach House
More Colors in the Emotional Rainbow
By Andrew Clayman
Published in Chicago Innerview, September 2009



As evidenced by the font-size discrepancy on the marquee, Beach House is merely opening for Grizzly Bear during the bands’ two-night stint at the Metro this month. Fans of the fast-rising Grizz should be warned, however—when Victoria Legrand starts singing, it’s easy to forget that anyone else is on the bill, or on the planet for that matter.

Legrand (vocals, organ) and Alex Scally (guitar) started Beach House back in 2004, and have since risen to the forefront of a thriving Baltimore indie scene. Both their self-titled 2006 debut and 2008 follow-up Devotion were hailed as dream-pop classics, with most of the emphasis falling on the duo’s classical training and ethereal, almost trance-inducing combination of organ and slide guitar. Chicago Innerview caught up with Legrand and Scally-- on tour in Europe-- at a lovely hotel in Amsterdam. . . eh hem, via email.

Andrew Clayman: Back in December, in this very publication, I proudly ranked Devotion the top album of 2008. Was I correct, or did I totally miss the boat on something far superior?

Alex Scally: Well shucks, thank you very much. There were so many records released that were really unique and great in different ways—there’s no way that I could get my brain to decide which was #1. That would just be silly.

Victoria Legrand: Thanks, Andrew! I heard you ranked on 2008's Hottest Men of the Year! (writer’s note: Victoria’s sources are not to be trusted)

AC: Based on the rare updates to your website and Myspace pages, I’m assuming Beach House is a bit more old school in its sensibilities. Do you pay much attention to reviews or online buzz about the band, or is that generally avoided?

Alex: We notice it sometimes. I am just not online very often without a specific task....i think the online music world has been great for spreading music with less "commercial appeal." I just hope that people are taking time to really listen.

Victoria: I don't like to look for internet spluge. I like to keep internet at a safe distance.

AC: A lot of critics tend to fixate on Beach House’s “dreamy” sound and classical background, but your skills as pop songwriters tend to get overlooked, I think. Do you see Beach House as a “pop” band?

Alex: Yes, we do. I am so glad that you say that because we do fancy ourselves to be pop writers. I think that every song that we’ve made has had that energy-- it's been there all along.

Victoria: Pop is music that makes you feel, and we have always responded to sounds and melodies that made us instantly feel something right inside of our chests. The classical knowledge is a great tool. But your natural instincts take over when you hear something right.

AC: Do you think it’s fair that you tend to get labeled as a “melancholy” band, or is that a mischaracterization?

Victoria: The melancholy thing is okay, but I think many other colors in the emotional rainbow are coming. I hope to start hearing new words other than "languid" and "sleepy.”

AC: After you get back from Europe you’ll be touring as the opener for Grizzly Bear. How close are you with those guys and what are you looking forward to about that experience?

Alex: They’ve been kind of like an older brother to us— we’ve learned a lot from them. I suppose I’m just excited to play in larger rooms and try to make it feel intense for ourselves, even with the loss of personal communication.

Victoria: Killer bros, those guys. We are looking forward to driving thousands of miles while they soar by in the big old bus. All joking aside... they have been nothing but natural from the start-- kind and thoughtful. Ed (Droste) is always blowing my mind.

AC: How’s the next Beach House record coming together?

Victoria: It’s cocooning splendidly!

Alex: We’ve finished recording and are hoping to release it in Jan or Feb.

AC: Considering Victoria’s pedigree (she is the niece of French film composer Michel Legrand) and Beach House’s sort of David Lynchian mood, it seems like you’d be perfectly suited to working on some film scores? Any discussions of something like that?

Alex: Yes, in our dreams....hopefully soon!

Victoria: I would love to work on a film. It's always been a dream of mine.

AC: Finally, as one of those much-ballyhooed “Baltimore bands,” are you generally proud ambassadors for the city, or does the association start to become a bit limiting?

Alex: I’m fine with it. We really love the community we’ve found in Baltimore—everyone is making such drastically different stuff, really.

Victoria: Yeah, Baltimore is just fine. I live there, my stuff is there-- so is my cat. I come and go. Great friends. It's never limiting-- just every couple of months I want to run screaming into the desert.

Black Moth Super Rainbow

Tobacco's Not Tripping
The Man Behind Black Moth Super Rainbow Doesn't Dig Psychedelia
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Metro Pulse, June 2009



He goes by the name Tobacco, his band is called Black Moth Super Rainbow, and his song credits include the tasty likes of “Lollipopsichord” and “Iron Lemonade.” He also knows what you’re thinking—and you would be wrong. There's nothing psychedelic about electro-pop’s trippiest band.

“I’ve never set out to make psychedelic music,” Tobacco says (in a coherent, human-sounding voice, no less). “I don’t listen to psychedelic music. I don’t particularly appreciate psychedelic music.”

When asked if he finds Black Moth Super Rainbow’s presumed ties to the drug culture to be somewhat limiting, Tobacco takes it a step further.

“I find it extremely limiting, and I’m definitely not okay with it,” he says, releasing some apparent pent-up agitation. “I mean, I don’t care what anyone does when they listen to the music. It does not matter to me as long as you enjoy it. But, what bothers me is how 90 percent of our write-ups have to talk about how we’re stoners or how you have to be stoned to listen to the music. It just trivializes everything that I’m trying to do. It’s fine if people still want to call it whatever they’ll call it, but it’s just the constant, never ending drug references that really get old.”

Tobacco (and yes, he did select his own pseudonym) was probably slightly more forgiving of the hallucinatory similes two years ago, when Black Moth Super Rainbow’s superb album Dandelion Gum was making the blog rounds, widely hailed as one of 2007’s breakout indie efforts. Even with a DIY production style, Tobacco had managed to carve out a sonically vast, danceable, otherworldly electro-pop gestalt, landing Black Moth somewhere between the robot romanticism of Air and the somewhat creepier robot futurism of Boards of Canada.

Despite the success of Dandelion Gum, though, Tobacco and his occasional Black Moth bandmates have never abandoned their unusual commitment to shyness—no real names, no traditional press photos, and vocals sung exclusively through a droid vocoder of some kind. Their vague back-story—born from the muck of some West Pennsylvania Nowheresville—and Tobacco’s nonsensical lyrics have only helped enhance the group’s appeal among listeners itching for something with a hint of mystery.

“It goes back to pre-internet days, I think,” says Tobacco. “I think you probably know just as much about us as people might have known about most bands in the 70s or 80s. And they weren’t considered mysterious back then. It’s just that everyone has to know everything now about everybody in every band, so by comparison, we’re considered mysterious. But this is honestly just the way we are. It was never a marketing thing with us.”

Of course, on planet indie-rock, what makes you charming one day can also make you yesterday’s news tomorrow. Thus, Black Moth Super Rainbow’s fourth album, Eating Us, was greeted with largely ho-hum reviews last month. Much of the lackluster response has focused on Tobacco’s decision to enter a professional studio for the first time in his career—taking BMSR hi-fi with none other than hotshot producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, MGMT, Weezer).

“For me just to go into any old studio would be a mistake,” Tobacco explains, “but with (Fridmann), he was able to add a lot of space and dimension to what we do. And on top of that, after meeting him, I knew he was really, really open to me and my dumb ideas.

“The interesting thing was Dave was actually nervous about changing our sound. I think he was a little worried about the backlash, and it’s actually the backlash that we are kind of getting now. But I sort of expected it. My philosophy was, ‘hey, do what you do.’ I wasn’t really worried about changing the sound, because that’s kind of the point of what we were doing.”

For all the attention given to Fridmann’s professional deflowering of BMSR on Eating Us, the final product he and Tobacco produced sounds a lot closer to Dandelion Gum than it does to The Soft Bulletin. Standout tracks like “Twin of Myself” and “Tooth Decay” maintain the fun, mystery, and underrated pop songcraft that made Black Moth a noteworthy find in the first place. So, how does Tobacco explain the seemingly irrational backlash?

“Just laziness and a lack of imagination, that’s all. For some reason, people think the new Grizzly Bear record is like the greatest thing in the world. I heard it playing at a record store, and a guy told me what it was, and I was like, ‘this is perfect old person record store music.’ Because it’s just so easy to understand. That seems to be what people are looking for right now.”