The Thousands

Come January 23, 2010 the world will change. Just a little bit. Not too much. But those who know why will cherish the day. Australia will see the physical release of an album that is currently streets ahead in the reckoning (mine, at least) for best indie release of 2010. Teen Dream by Beach House. Premature? No way. Well, perhaps in one way. We get it 3 days before the Americans.

The story behind this record, much like the LP itself, is almost too perfect. It was made in upstate New York, in a building once a church now called Dreamland. It indeed sounds like it was recorded in a place of worship – lusher than an AA convention and infused with quiet, unassuming spirituality. It’s not just that Teen Dream has all the elements of a great dream pop record – muted percussion, sexless vocals, and a loping, elegiac pace – it’s that placed next to Beach House’s splendid first two albums, it sounds impossibly even better. Teen Dream is not a concession of any of the qualities that made Beach House noteworthy in the first place, it’s a further embrace of them. A deepening of them.

Even more than they were after Devotion, the Baltimore duo’s second effort, the slowcore and Belle and Sebastian comparisons have become woefully inadequate. Beach House are just Beach House. Thank God for that.