Beach House
Interview Laura Martin
Photography David Ellison
Twentysomethings Alex Scally (guitar and keyboards) and Victoria Legrand (vocals and organ) settle down with a cup of coffee on the sofa. The Baltimore duo is thoughtful and soft-spoken during conversation, but have a wry humor that pops up in their stories now and again. Together, you can see how the dynamic works between them and lends the unique chemistry that creates their own strain of dream-pop – that ethereal, indie sound the band have become famous for.
Beach House’s debut album, Beach House (Carpark Records), became one of the cult albums of the year in 2006 and their follow up Devotion (Carpark/Bella Union) in 2008, was met with equal accolades as they honed their visceral, multi-layered, ambient sound.
I met up with Beach House while promoting their third album, Teen Dream (Sub Pop/Bella Union, 2010) in the tiny West London gem of Bush Hall, a slice of music hall history, complete with chandeliers, red drapes and ornate stage. It seems a fitting place for Beach House’s melancholic and atmospheric tunes, where we quizzed them on their teenage desires and dreams – and whether these became a reality.
Your first gig was at Royal Festival Hall. Not a bad place to start.
Victoria: It was a little silly. It was really formal.
Alex: But fun. London’s like the New York crowd. It’s tough.
What kind of mindset were you in when writing Teen Dream?
Alex: We were obsessed with the songs. We were working really hard on these ideas we’d had for months and had kind of been pushing our energy into it. There was this obsessive, passionate, teenage, unrealistic vibe going on. You just believe in it so much.
Victoria: You get so much energy from living life, turbulent and unexpected.
Were you reflecting back to what you were like as teenagers?
Victoria: Not literally. I think it was just the excitement of—
Alex (picking up from Victoria): …working. We felt really lucky that this wasn’t the first time we had to get back to touring and go right to work. Our label was helping us out to get this money to go into the studio and do this thing, so I think we felt like, ‘Yeah, okay, let’s do this thing, this is the time to concentrate and throw ourselves completely into it.’
What was your biggest dream as a teenager?
Alex: I was pretty stupid really. I just wanted to hang out with my friends and drink beer.
Like everyone, really.
Victoria: I definitely wondered about the future but I think I also just wanted to be in love. I just really wanted a boy to be in love with me. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t happen.
Alex (laughing): And it will never happen!
Awww.
Victoria (laughing): Yeah, I just wanted to kiss and make out basically.
And if you could see you as a teenager now, what bit of advice would you give your teen self?
Victoria: I’d probably just give myself a hug and be like, ‘Just chill out. Life is a never-ending, fun rollercoaster!’ I would say, ‘You can be a little more bad than you are now. Don’t worry so much.’ I was a pretty serious, apologetic teenager. Teenagers and families are always a pretty intense combination. I would be like, ‘Don’t let you parents screw you up too much (laughs)!’
Well, that’s inevitable, isn’t it?
Victoria: Yeah, I would say ‘Live day by day, don’t worry about the future because things can happen you don’t expect.’
Alex: I think I would say to myself, ‘Don’t go to college. It’s just going to waste time – you should just start playing music.’ I was really into music in high school and was made to feel I had to do something serious with my life. I just think that’s how it is with most people are who are into film or photography.
Or anything creative really, you’re told, ‘Oh you can’t do that as a job.’
Alex: Yeah, it’s like, ‘Well, that’s really great, but you need to go to college and think about what you’re really going to do.’
Victoria: I was really into theatre and everyone was like, ‘Oh, you should go to college.’
At least you had your music as a form of escapism.
Alex: For me, it was all I did. I would get home from school, do my work and just play music all night.
What instruments did you play?
Alex: Well, we had a piano that I played a lot on, but I took lessons on the bass so I would just turn on the radio and play along with all the songs. That was one of my favorite things to do.
Victoria: I started playing piano when I was little and I just did that, piano and singing from early on.
Were you in bands before Beach House?
Victoria: Not serious bands. I was in high school bands, in college and after college but nothing that was ever serious.
Alex: I just played with friends all the time, nothing formal. Most of the time I did a lot of recording like making compositions on the 4-track. That was my favorite thing to do. I still have an ugly number of tapes of teen-age compositions.
Do you ever go back and listen to them?
Alex: I did, once in college.
Was it like going back and reading your diary: a bit cringey?
Alex: It was just like (sings) ‘Bom, bam, bom a dom da da.’
You know, they’ve started up this night here called something like Teen Angst, where you’re invited to go up on stage and read out extracts from your teenage diary.
Victoria: That’s awesome!
It was brilliant. All these people were getting up on stage and reading the most angsty, self-indulgent stuff ever.
Alex: Or what they think is unbelievably profound, like those insane moments when you were like, ‘The world is not real.’
Victoria: Yeah, it’s crazy. I remember writing poem after poem. I remember going on a family vacation and I was literally like lying on my bed, pissed off, writing poem after poem. It was such a crazy time period. I would look out the window and see a bird and be like, ‘I am the bird…’ (Laughs) It’s such a ridiculous time in your life. Your hormones are everywhere. You’re just like, not real. You hear your parents in the kitchen, cleaning stuff and you’re just like completely clueless, yet obsessed with yourself. My mother hated having teenagers.
I think everyone does.
Victoria: I think if I ever have teenagers, I’ll really get into it.
And at what point did you guys meet up and want to start a band?
Victoria: We met on his porch. I had met him through a friend of mine who had known him through high school. It was just one of those kind of things where we met and have just been playing music ever since. It was very fateful, a spontaneous but steady thing.
How do you create your music? Do you have a process?
Victoria: Bits and pieces. Coming at different angles. We just work on one or two things at a time.
Alex: Of the 30 or so songs we’ve released, they’ve all come about differently. Sometimes it will be something quite composed that Victoria has been working on, or something quite composed that I’ve been working on or created. Or sometimes it will just be a few chords one of us has come up with together while practicing something else. It’s all really different. But what’s the same is it all grows together we get together, we work on it and we move through it and feel it out, let it grow naturally.
Victoria: We don’t try to force anything. We always know if something is to be left alone.
You’re quite into David Lynch. Has that inspired any of your work?
Victoria: He doesn’t directly inspire it, but I think that’s something that’s been with us since the first record, that world. He’s a director we admire but there are many directors we think are great. We’d definitely be interested in doing a soundtrack with him.
Do you get involved in the creative side of your music videos?
Victoria: I directed one of the 10 videos and the other nine were done by other people. They are not traditional music videos; they’re more like films and so the totality of it is the creation of videos. We did not interfere with the artists, we just gave them the song and they did their work. We never changed it at all. We just thought it would be a fun risk and when you’re making art, you’re just putting something out there. It’s not definitive, right or wrong. It’s just expanding some kind of idea.
How did you find working on video?
Victoria: I’d never done a video before and the only reason I felt compelled was that I had this vision that wouldn’t go away. Thinking about someone else doing the video, I just felt like I wanted to do it. This whole process has been a very long, intense and challenging but worthwhile process and this was just like adding another thing to try for new. I need a little break but it’s fun to film stuff. We’ve been filming on tour.
Are you planning on making a tour diary or something?
Victoria: We’ll see.
Is it X-rated stuff or quite safe?
Victoria (laughing): It’s just us reading.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
Victoria: Jana Hunter, “Celebration”.
Alex: I’ve been listening to ’80s British music that everyone’s probably so over already. I never got into it before for some reason. Stuff like Depeche Mode, the Smiths. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I never listened to this before. The hits! The hits!’
The Smiths are a classic band you listen to as a teen in Britain. Like, ‘Oh, Morrissey feels my pain too.’
Alex: Yeah, he was feeling it for everyone.
Victoria: I’ve been hitting the reggae vibe. I always fall back on it. Bob Marley, I know he’s most obvious, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It kind of nurtures your brain and quiets it down.
Is that what you need on tour?
Victoria: Not all the time, but sometimes when you need something for a transition of one time to another, like tour prep to touring, there are gaps in between when you need brain food. It usually results in Depeche Mode or Bob Marley. We just sort of listen to everything.
Alex: There’s really so much great music in the world, and we’re lucky to have the kind of friends who’re always digging it up as well. (Pulls out iPod) It’s just amazing how much stuff is on here. I just got one for the first time, my first one ever. Do you know Question Mark and the Mysterians? (Plays the opening riffs of “96 Tears”) That’s it. He referred to himself as ‘?’. Do you know Arthur Russell? He’s got some amazing stuff. He’s fucking amazing. Oh, I’d never heard of Bananarama too. They had some hits!
