Baltimore, Maryland duo Beach House is big enough in the indie world that they have the ability to play large venues and be a marquee name on a festival. The last time I saw Beach House was headlining the side stage at Osheaga in Montreal last summer. The decidedly much smaller venue Lee’s Palace was playing host to the band for two sold out shows. Arriving moments before the opening act Steve Strohmeier the crowd was sparse. After the second opening act, Skyler Skjelset played, I turned around and it would have been impossible to move around.
Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally came out and took their positions in the near dark and the lighting didn’t change much throughout the show. Legrand stood behind her organ playing extended notes while lightly singing in the microphone that caused her vocals to have a slight echo effect to give depth. Scally stood hunched over working his guitar methodically while offering ohh’s and ahh’s into his microphone to finish stamping haziness over the crowd.
Playing Heart of Chambers, Legrand would hold notes on her organ with one hand and let the other arm float around and gently twist her body leading us down the rabbit hole for the evening. Their music can be easy to get lost in but it has a perfect beat mapped out for every song. You can feel the heartbeat to their playing. After playing several songs alone, drummer Daniel Franz came onstage to join them helping to recreate better their recorded material. First up they played Wild, one of the singles from their last album, 2013’s Bloom. The song has a hip-hop like beat that makes you bob your head up and down. If they were to have a dance song, this would be the closest you will get to it. It has a sexy groove that runs through your body but doesn’t overpower it.
Even though the band’s music is dreamy and drenched in haze every note has a reason and purpose. You could pick out every vibrato solo from Scally, every bar scale from Legrand and cymbal ride from Franz. When the band started playing the opening plinking notes to Lazuli the crowd cheered loudly, possibly one of the loudest moments of the night. Eventually the small stage got a bit more crowded when both opening acts joined the band. Strohmeier and Skjelset came out and both spent the set either playing bass or synths. The first song they played Silver Soul, most famous for being the beat to Kendrick Lamar’s Money Trees (although the sample is reversed on his song).
The band mostly refrained from banter; the few times Legrand spoke it was met with cheering. The band is currently on their Northern Exposure tour where the only dates are in Canada and Alaska. “I know Toronto is the place where people come from other places? Who’s from Saskatoon? Nelson? Calgary? Winnipeg? Thunder Bay?” Legard queried the audience with each getting a small pocket of cheers. Several of the songs sound like a super slowed down version of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. The propulsive bass drumming always rose to the top of the music with the deep booming sound keeping the songs in the moment instead of drowning away in white noise. The crowd was swaying back and forth with some people seemingly like they tuned out everything in the world and the show was just for their ears only. One guy up in the front literally shouted, “I love you, I sincerely love you” in between every song break and he was awkwardly ignored every time for his obnoxiousness.
The set ended with the band’s hit single Myth closing the night out with lots of soul. A crescendo of music created an ocean of synths and organ taking us away from our problems and worries. It is a fitting song to close out a show with its lyrics resembling a Joseph Campbell lecture in helping to define journey and story making. The band left the stage briefly but came back out to play Irene leaving the audience blissed out and to return to the real world, unfortunately where it was raining outside of the venue, but for over ninety minutes they transported us all away. Luckily those that were unable to see Beach House on the first night could see them with a combined crowd similar to what they normally play. Not many bands of their stature play Canada’s flyover provinces and judging by the ticket sales listed on their site, Beach House fans will come out in droves.
Thanks to Collective Concerts for media access.
