Beach House – Cargo, London 02/12/08

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Photpgraphs by Anika

Beach House suit London’s Cargo. It’s a cavernous space with speakers in the various bars and seating areas, filling the whole venue with the sound of whoever is playing. In the main room an enormous mirror ball coats the vaulted walls in flickering specks of light. On the right night, it’s a very atmospheric place, and on this freezing London evening Cargo is the perfect setting for a packed out headline show from Bella Union’s Baltimore based duo.

Beach House make warm, intimate, fairylit music. Their sound is an embracing drift played on organ, guitar, drums and vocals. They open with the first two tracks from their recent stunningly beautiful album Devotion, ‘Wedding Bell’ and ‘You Came To Me’; two heart-stopping slow-motion poems that float along on muted drums and gentle slide guitar, droning organ and captivating voice of singer Victoria Legrand.

Legrand sways like a rag doll, her fright wig hair ever more extravagantly unkempt. Song after song rolls from the speakers, each every bit as beautiful as the last. The start of ‘Gila’ draws a gasp from the crowd, and ‘Master Of None’ sounds so perfect I want to breath in the sound just to hang on to it a little longer.

This dreamy pop music is a slow revelation. The only low point in the performance is that it ever has to end, leaving the audience warmed through, washed up and wanting more on the rainswept Shoreditch streets.

Beach House on MySpace