Saturday 19 May 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #184 - Beach House, "Bloom"

I've built myself up a bad impression of these guys. I'm in a bad mood. Figure it's time I listened to this and give my angry side a work out.

First track, "Myth", is all shivery and cuddly and what you might expect. "My mother said to me/That I would get in trouble", they begin on second track "Wild" while topical synths heave underneath. Meh. There's a cheap, gimmicky keyboard intro and some sub-Kate Bush panting on "Lazuli", which irritates me further. I realise I'm listening to this in a bad mood, etc; but if it was better, it would improve my mood - and I don't have time to wait for my mood to get any better. I've another 315 of these fuckers to get through.


There's too much of this bilge swilling around already. It's too hard to keep engaging with it critically; it's like swimming against the same currents over and again. And I hate swimming. Even the title "Troublemaker" bothers me. It's that kind of domestic, fluffy duvet worship of some imagined sexy, evil being that will never actually cause any kind of threat or - Aaah, fuck it! I'm boring myself now and even here isn't the place for one of those rants.


Maybe it's because there are only two of them - making music as/in a couple maybe drifts into gauzy self-satisfaction. Maybe, maybe: as wishy and washy a word as you might expect. "Wishes" actually lifts my evil feelings a tad; the choppy guitar solo in particular. But I just wish they (and by extension I) could escape from the all-smothering synth noise. It's a ubiquity as unwelcome as the 808s was welcome back in them there days.

"On the Sea" dispenses with the electronic wash, leaving a piano to clinically pick out the same notes, but the music itself demonstrates the same limp purposelessness of what they are doing. "Irene" is almost seventeen minutes long; I cannot and will not be arsed with that. Sorry, Beach House, not your day for a fair hearing from Coc. I'm sure you're pretty broken up about it.

Rating: Aaarggghh out of Fuck It

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