You couldn’t lose me if you tried.

Bal­ti­more’s Beach House play music that Amer­i­can­izes Broad­cast in much the same way that Pave­ment did the Fall. Not only do they achieve that much sought after soft, kalei­do­scop­ic focus and gauzy feel, they also fash­ion a min­i­mal­is­tic, ele­gant psy­che­delia that empha­sizes the pas­toral rather than the mod­ern. There’s a lot to be said for artists who choose expres­sion­ism to con­vey mean­ing, rely­ing more on images and mood than lyrics alone; think of Michael Stipe’s inde­ci­pher­able lyrics on Mur­mur and all the poet­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties! But as Beach House­’s sus­pend­ed melodies scud like clouds over sput­ter­ing click­tracks and key­board demos, time slows down and it’s impos­si­ble to for­get how roman­tic and win­some Mazzy Star sound­ed on “Fade Into You”, and how inchoate and imme­di­ate those sen­sa­tions and excite­ment remain.

Last Thurs­day Beach House enveloped the audi­ence with their drowsy reverb, hum­ming, twangy gui­tar and lilt­ing, dis­tant vocals. The long­ing expressed in their songs is the stuff of unre­quit­ed loves. The image of the beach house itself con­jures won­der­ful mem­o­ries: board­walks, cot­ton can­dy, biki­nis and car­ni­val rides on the pier. Con­verse­ly, those May to Sep­tem­ber romances end in fuzzy nos­tal­gia for a hol­i­day well-spent, the way in which Gondry express­es “good times” in his momen­tary idylls. The effu­sive, effer­ves­cent beau­ty lingers well past the sea­son, rem­i­nis­cences to warm us well after the leaves have changed and fallen.