The Daily Spin, December 17
Beach House | Bloom
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: Bloom (2012)
Artist: Beach House
Link:
Beach House knows ball.
It’s really that simple, I think, when you get down to the minute details - every single note is utterly pristine, placed just so to evoke the strongest possible wave within you, an album that truly embodies the sound of ‘dream pop’ in a sense that is really only matched or beaten by other Beach House albums.
That’s the thing about their work - it’s so distinctly of their own sound that it’s hard to make direct comparisons to others, at times, because no one is really doing it like them. Even ‘Irene’, which is admittedly the oddball of the album as a 17-minute odyssey, winds up feeling distinctly Beach House-like in its slow build and orchestrated progression, the build and fall archetype flowing directly through.
I think my main gripe with this album, as with most of this group’s catalogue, is that the songs simply go on a little too long. There’s no need for every track on this record to be north of 4 minutes, and it sitting at an even hour over ten songs is pretty audacious, no matter how you swing it.
Rating: 9.1/10
Best Tracks: Myth; Lazuli
Worst Tracks: Troublemaker