Dining on dream pop. (Photo: Beach House)

[by Alex Roman III]

Some bands are just enjoyed much more in the comforts of your own home. Perhaps while reading the morning paper or lying down at the end of the day, waiting to fall into a deep slumber.

Others simply fall short when you listen to their recordings, because they fail to capture the emotional energy and spirit you've become familiar with seeing them live. The Beach House show at Los Angeles' Echo was a mixture of both, with Beach House falling into the former category and their opener, Papercuts, into the latter.

The Papercuts albums are admittedly fantastic, but seeing them live brought out something that you can't hear on the record. Their subtle mood of their sound thrives within open spaces; you can hear the music breathing. Plus, Papercuts seemed to play better in a live setting because they felt more like a loose group of musicians jamming together with a specific idea of what they wanted to create. The only unfortunate part of their set is that it seemed severely short, which was probably a result of the early/late show combination that night.

As for Beach House, their latest effort Devotion took huge steps in mastering what makes them great: The palpable ambience of each song, and the sheer beauty of Victoria Legrand's voice as it dances through the twisting, winding sounds. There is something to be said about Beach House's success with this formula, since their ambience seems too intangible to be intellectualized. It's felt deep inside your soul, emotions created by feelings of familiarity both painful and hopeful.

It's hard to read people, so it's hard to say if they actually like spending their hard-earned money to have those raw emotional feelings exposed at a show. Judging from the crowd, the verdict seemed to be split, with half the audience taking part in the catharsis and the other half losing interest. Which, as mentioned earlier, is probably because the band sounded exactly as they do on record.

Even with the addition of the Papercuts' Jason Quever on percussion, Beach House still relied on tracking, which instead of adding the same ambience as the record actually took away any of the deep gut-wrenching emotions you may feel when listening to it around the house or in your car. In short, their set just sounded like a reproduction.

And yes, it was a beautiful reproduction, but it somehow left you a bit cheated in the end. Because it was merely a shell of what makes the band cling so dear to your heart.

March 23, 2008