Beach House, Their Muses, And Once Twice Melody

By Laura Studarus


Beach House members Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally acknowledge that, like each person else, they have been impacted by the string of devastating global events within the past two years — and that the extended pandemic shutdown gave them time to explore the musical nuances of what would become their eighth studio album, Once Twice Melody. Yet more than music about mess, what they crafted was a tribute to where their imaginations took them while each person else was getting sick of the phrase “unprecedented times.” That meant making peace with the fact COVID-19 would forever be segment of their story.


“You can't not say it,” Legrand tells MTV News. “We’ve all been affected — and the boundaries caused us to shift in little various ways.”


There’s no arguing the dream-pop duo have an innate sense of their wheelhouse. Yet despite a steady clip of releases, starting with their spartan self-titled album in 2006, they’ve also allowed themselves a fair quantity of reinvention (something that Scally emphasizes should be normalized in any creative field). Right following the identically hushed follow-up Devotion, the two signed to Sub Pop and produced Teen Dream, an album that was meant to fill bigger spaces, they joked in interviews, and dispel any rumors they were just hippies in floaty dresses. Any time the venues got a little bit also big for their comfort while supporting Vampire Weekend in 2010, they scaled back, playing smaller rooms and more dates as they released the similarly bombastic Bloom and stripped-down twins Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars.


Yet even the My Bloody Valentine-reminiscent wall of sound that became their seventh album 7 never shook the core foundations of the band: two people, in a room, staring at each other and embracing the push and pull as they create something new. It’s that outlook that Legrand believes allowed them to keep creating, even because the world was quickly changing around them.


“It was in 2018 once we began feeling the beginnings of the next thing, whichever that was going to be,” Legrand says. “And so, any time the pandemic began, and everything started shutting down, we were already in our studio, this place that we've created in Baltimore. The door was already locked… And here we are three years later. Two of these three years were in this pandemic and living as people in the pandemic and as artists during it. Nevertheless we feel bizarrely lucky and grateful that we had art to create, because I know a lot of people didn't, and I think a lot of people were paralyzed creatively.”


While Legrand has noticed joy in watching birds, and Scally has been busy complicated himself by learning Bach pieces, despite admitting he’s not an excellent pianist (“mathematical and peaceful and memorization feels good,” he notes), ultimately, creating music is simply embedded into who they are as people. It’s a practice they weren’t ready to give up while in a time of global turmoil.


”Almost half of our lives right now have been in this band,” Legrand says. “And so, it's the making of music, the processes of it, the touring, the exchanges, the thoughtfulness, the creating the artwork, the animations, the video. All of it combined. I can't separate it from life. I just think that creating, period, is it for us.”


Released in four chapters, the final of which drops today (February 18), Once Twice Melody is perhaps Beach House’s most expansive album to date. Legrand’s sinuous alto and Scally’s guitar work is reimagined through a series of lenses. On “Sunset,” a rare acoustic guitar sees the pair embrace a sense of stillness and finality, with Legrand asking to “lay me where the ferns grow.” Meanwhile, vocoder-heavy “Runaway” explores the flip side of the coin, a wish to flee at any cost. And in a first for the musical group, legendary composer David Campbell (Beck, Adele, Billie Eilish) was recruited to arrange live strings, lending several of the album’s 18 tracks a haunted, film-noir ambience. Scally and Legrand were producing each nuance themselves, alone in the studio day soon after day.


“In terms of creative spirit, I think each person just does what's organic to them,” Scally says. “I think I need to do the day-to-day [work] because maybe I don't have the voice of God come through me as much — so I have to prepare ensure I'm there once it happens, whereas certain folks are like electric lightning rods.”


Any time Legrand mentions flow ideas by way of the creative process, it’s with a sense of reverence and curiosity. The way she sees it, the muses don’t habitually deliver everything they require — and it’s the band’s job from release to release to chase these elements that don’t habitually make it into existence.


“That's the insatiable appetite of the lofty artist,” she says with a laugh, making it clear that it’s the process, not herself, that she takes seriously. “There’s this sort of pleasant disappointment. Nevertheless I think that we already wanted to go to some exhilarating places.”


However having the luxury of a prismatic smear of uninterrupted studio time brings up an interesting dilemma: How do you suggest any time you’re done?


“I was just attempting to think back on all of the moments, which is hard to even parse out,” Scally says. “But I wouldn't mention there's a defined moment, nevertheless it was sort of a long burn, so long. It's a long road.”


At that, Legrand gently contradicts her bandmate. Yes, writing a sole song — let alone an entire album — is a breathtaking accomplishment. Nevertheless for her, pushing through meant celebrating each micro-milestone along the way.


“This journey was longest all of the ones we've made,” she says. “It had the most twists and turns, and there were times where it felt endless. Nevertheless then, we've just learned to hear that voice that says it's over. There has to be that moment in group for you not to totally, totally lose your mind. You have got to prepare design a closure for yourselves.”


“I'm glad that it's supposedly over in the sense that the record is coming out. We're no longer making it. Yet it's bittersweet. It's a sadness, because it's leaving.”


We’ve all taken time off being perceived. Life is slowly grinding back to regular, which means most of us will experience an irregular interaction or two as we relearn who we are in public. That quest becomes even trickier any time it comes to understanding the art you’ve created in isolation. Given that, both members of Beach Residence are perhaps even more excited than usual about creating the final link in the Once Twice Melody chain by playing it live — hopefully, to as several crowds as possible.


“We’ve all been programmed in the last few years for: the unknown is terrifying, right?” Legrand says. “What I don't know is scaring the crap out of me. And the future is uncertain. Right now I find once again that the unknown, in this regard, is ultimately life-affirming. And yes, it won't be easy, and there really are going to be bumps in the road. Yet it's going to ultimately be exhilarating and life-giving and not just for us, because the people who are performing and creating, nevertheless hopefully for people that haven't been to a concert nevertheless. The wheels are beginning to roll, and that's a nice feeling.”