Beach House – Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, CA. 15/3/2008

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Photographs by Joshua Uziel

A late night concert (10 pm) at Bottom of the Hill’s intimate setting proved to be an apt time and place for the Baltimore duo Beach House. The two disco balls churning on their axes inside wooden boxes alongside Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally pooled red, blue, and green lights on the short ceiling. It looked like how the moon can reflect off the ocean onto creaky docks jutting out from the shoreline. The pooling swirls of changing lights coalesced on the roof as the droning organ sounds coming out of Legrand’s keyboard. Papercuts’ creator, Jason Quever, accompanied the duo on drums.

His light drum flourishes utilizes light floor tom brushes. At their loudest it was muted and subtle with the bass drum serving as the heartbeat and the restrained bass and cymbals only showing up during peaks of drama. Quever pushed Beach House’s autumnal charm forward into the wintry landscape of this year’s wonderful sophomore release, Devotion. Curiously he didn’t play as an opening band for this date on their spring tour. Papercuts’ intricate sounds would have interlocked better than the two incongruous openers of the night – Best Wishes and Anaura.

San Francisco’s Best Wishes were tinged with a bit of film noir but not in the way Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds plunge those depths. They tried to cull the type of open road wooziness that Silver Jews inhabit so well. Songs like ‘In the Well’ followed the story of a man throwing his wife into a well. The band assured the audience that the wife survived in the story but nobody seemed to be listening. Percolating percussion and slide guitar reverberated on this and other song but each one lacked the drama the subject matter craved. Slide guitars and delay pedals on ‘Cry’ and ‘Stones’ circled the band’s skeletal percussion like a post rock band picking over the bits of something Gang of Four or The Fall may have possibly constructed. The moody scavenging off their self-released self-titled EP left much to be desired.

Next on the docket was another San Francisco band called Anaura. Their poppy indie rock sound was greeted with scattered laughs mainly due to Alex Hillmer’s off key lead vocals. The combination of the keyboardist’s awkward tambourine bopping and the band’s paltry union of Spoon’s sparse instrumentation and Supergrass’ garage veracity felt uninspired. ‘Worse for Drink’ supplied some interesting harmonies if you got past the blatant Smiths cribbing. Thankfully both sets were over quickly so the audience could bask in the rich intonations of Legrand’s deep Nico-like voice and Scally’s hazy entrancing guitar work.

The confines of relationships were italicized on Beach House’s newest release as though the record’s title, were a prison you could never escape. Legrand’s vocal delivery seemed to cater to that interpretation as they traversed a set in favor of new showing off their entrancing new material.

‘Wedding Bell’ started the set with brushes of sashaying percussion and warm electric ambling. Harpsichord oscillations echoed the stage. When the tension arose and a high register Shepherd’s scale popped into the mix, Legrand’s voice became desperate, as though a wedding bell is some sort of strange hypnosis. “Your wish is my command” indeed. ‘Gila’’s programmed beat came next where Scally’s guitar work took the reins. It’s easy to be transfixed by Legrand’s virtuso pipes but her counterpart added his own subtle flourishes to the chiming track. ‘Holy Dances’ waltzing beat (supplied by a solemn Quever) lulled the audience into a peaceful coma. Speaking of sleeping, the only detractor for having such a late concert with such hypnotic music is the fight to keep your eyes open.

To assure fans didn’t nod off and miss something, the duo sprinkled in old favorites from their beautiful self-titled debut. Legrand’s falsetto cooed the the back-to-nature lyrics of ‘Apple Orchard’ with a dramatic inertia, “let’s lie down for awhile / you can smile / lay your head in the old old fashion”. ‘Master of None’, with its interlocking organ drones also turned out to be a perfect addition to the set. Despite a overly languish ‘Some Things Last A Long Time’ (a Daniel Johnston cover) the band received a sleepy-eyed encore.

Legrand beamed shyly and thanked the audience, but chided them like a shrewd mother. “You should be asleep so this next one is a lullaby”. After playing the ringing ‘Lovelier Girl’ the band vacated the stage, leaving us with only twinkling memories of their beguiling set.

Setlist:
Wedding Bell
Gila
Holy Dances
Apple Orchard
You Came To Me
Some Things Last A Long Time (Daniel Johnston cover)
Turtle Island
Master of None
D.A.RL.I.N.G.
Heart of Chambers

Encore:
Lovelier Girl

Click here to read an exclusive Beach House UK tour diary

mp3:> Beach House – Gila