Beach House
Depression Cherry
SUB POP
8/10
There was a certain plushness that Beach House pulled off on previous releases (2010’s Teen Dream and 2012’s Bloom) that the duo has strayed from on Depression Cherry. Then again, they never promised you a rose garden or the continued engorging of their psychedelic art-pop particulars. It’s not as if, on Depression Cherry, they’ve stripped bare or relinquished the live hard snare sound that was developed on their previous dreamy albums. There’s simply more ambient room to the artificially starry arrangements of cuts such as “Beyond Love” and “Bluebirds.” They haven’t filled tracks to the brim with clicks, bangs, and buzzes like on Bloom. There’s a welcome openness to Cherry that allows for a more direct brand of address and aggression for the Baltimore band—sonically and lyrically. While “Beyond Love” finds their spooky semantics (“They take the simple things inside you and put nightmares in your hands”) to be about their business as usual, “PPP” has all the subtlety of a movie stunt punch (“Did you see it coming, it happened so fast”). Depression Cherry is ornery and pretty at the same time.
