beach house

There is an uncanny similarity between Beach House's Victoria Legrand and the church ladies of old. Yes, the blue-haired biddies hammer away on the organ while their pastor husbands preach the good word (think The Simpsons' Reverend and Mrs. Lovejoy). But while Legrand may occasionally rock the matronly pastel frocks, she's saving the organ from a rather unholy fate and instead injecting it back into the very heart of indie music.

The resonating organ and shimmering guitar make Beach House's second effort, Devotion, a dream world of an album. But all is not well in Beach House-land. Legrand's breathy vocals sing of her "devotion" as if she is both enthralled and imprisoned by it. "You Came to Me" features Legrand spinning a tale of a ghostly figure that appears to her in a dream, opening the album with a mysterious longing that emanates from her until its very end. On "Heart of Chambers," she sings, lovesick, "I'd like to be someone you could finally learn to love again," at a funeral-dirge pace. Daniel Johnston's "Some Things Last a Long Time" is an aptly chosen cover that Legrand's voice was made to sing, with lines like "The things we did, I can't forget/Some things last a long time."

The second album from Beach House is the sophisticated, more experienced, older brother of the first: slightly more polished, cautious and weary. Organ, guitar and occasionally piano blur together with foggy, heavy vocals creating an album capable of inducing sadness in even the most disaffected. No subdued highs and lows of "Master of None" here, just an honest chronicle for the loved and those longing to love them-no church ladies allowed.