Beach House - "Bloom"

Artist: Beach House
Album: Bloom
Label: Sub Pop Records
Release Date: May 15, 2012
Review by: Sean Kayden

Steady artistic growth and progress is essential in today’s music. Without it, you’ll remain hanging onto previous laurels and never move forward with your own true artistry. For the likes of dream-pop aficionados, Beach House, they’ve somehow managed to stay within the margins of their genre of expertise, but further expand their dreamy and hauntingly immaculate resonance. The latest album, “Bloom”, comes off the heels of their acclaimed 2010 opus, “Teen Dream”, which wowed critics and fans alike. “Bloom” dazzles and hypnotizes with its atmospheric haze that embodies the ten glorious tracks. The innately organic tone Beach House offers is a marvel to become fully immersed with. There is something truly remarkable to the weightlessness each track plays off. That’s not to say they don’t provide any substance because they do, but attempting to discover this kind of utter beauty anywhere else may as well be a futile task. 

           
Darkly layered rhythms and immensely personal, “Bloom” takes you on an ethereal journey. Composed of stunning melodies and a deep complexity of arrangements, the album is a passage to an unearthly reality. Occasionally a track proceeded by another track might only offer imperceptible change in style. However, if you listen to each song in consecutive order, the awareness to this will mean nothing because the bits and pieces of “Bloom” translate to something much greater. The concept of assorted feelings is scattered throughout the borders of the record. The lyrics transcend one emotion, but the sound lifts you to an even higher cloud of sentiment. Astonishingly, it’s vastly difficult to find a fault with any of the ten songs here. Seemingly flawless from start to finish, “Bloom” is exactly what it’s named after—a period of time which sparks the utmost exquisiteness and imagination.

To pinpoint exactly which track stands out the most would be pointless because each song here takes you to another world. My favorites though have to be the heaven-like sound of “Lazuli” and the lean guitar riffs spotted in “Wild”. In addition, the lyrics of “New Year” may not sparkle on page, but are ignited with such passion and are full of life when sung from the celestial sound of Victoria LeGrand—“You were getting wiser/It’s better this way/Faces in the mirror/Memories again/Now look to a feeling/It’s lighter than breath/All you ever wanted/Is it getting away?” The real treat with “Bloom” is the voyage from beginning to end—one I may add, will stay with you far after your return back.

Grade: 9.3 out of 10

Key Tracks: “Myth”, “Wild”, “Lazuli”, “New Year”

Published by Mountain Views News on May 19th, 2012
http://mtnviewsnews.com/v06/htm/n20/p10.htm