Beach House - Lemon Glow

Back in 2010, when Beach House released Teen Dream, their third LP, it felt like a monumental step for alternative pop music, it was right then and thanks to that album that the ethereal dream-like sounds produced by bands like Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star in the early 90s, became one of the defining traits of what would be produced by artists with pop inclinations but experimental desires. It was such an original and transgressive album, that it came to influence a wide range of bands and musicians, from Grimes to Lana del Rey. Dream Pop started its transition from quality of certain sound, if not to a genre, at least to a proper style.

Two years later, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally released Bloom, another superb and elegant album, whose only flaw might be that it was an extension of the exact same sounds and music of Teen Dream. Their following albums, Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars (both released in 2015), didn't do much to change our impression of the band as masters of dream pop but with not many ideas on how to evolve their style, and if their music was still above the average, it was starting to became very predictable.

It is Lemon Glow, the first single from their upcoming new album, 7, the one that is finally showing a band that finally understood the importance to explore paths out of their comfort zone, and it is an undulating synth the one that comes to set the difference. It's a simple effect, just a jerky but constant line, but the difference it makes it's huge: it makes the soft edges disappear, we're not anymore inside a silky dream, but in an acid psychedelic trip. Unequivocally it's a Beach House song (Legrand whispering provocative verses to induce love-making, the layered sound of instruments), but it is definitely a new direction for them, it's hypnotic in a different way than Norway or Myth, not sedative but kaleidoscopic; the way that this synth line interacts with the different combinations of sounds take us to discover ever-changing colorful forms through the song.

Lyrically they are as brilliant as ever. Finding new ways to talk about desire and love, the Lemon Glow is a beautiful synecdoche: the yellow texture of a dim light to represent the intimacy of making love. They even play with paradoxical ideas, this "lemon color, honey glow" could also be a "candy colored misery". As poetic and smart as we can expect from a band that has proved their way with words once and again.