Do you often look back to the good, old teenage days? Love and sex were still a new game to you and posters of your favourite bands covering your children’s room’s wallpaper. You didn’t what you were doing but you did it with great passion – except homework maybe. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally of Baltimore’s Beach House made an entire album in reminiscence of the feelings of those days.
After their second full-length Devotion made some waves reaching a greater audience all around the world Beach House left the same behind locking themselves up in a converted church in upstate New York to record their new album. The result is Teen Dream, one of the most beautiful records to be released in 2010 with ‘Norway‘ – the song that recently delighted the entire blogosphere – being only the tip of the iceberg.
When we meet in a rainy autumn Berlin a chat evolves, facing not only the problems of teens and musicians but sliding from the Internet, handwriting, Zodiacs onto telepathy, early morning in-bed talks about MJ’s ‘Beat It’, Zebras. And I find myself fascinated by the appearance of the haunting singer, and hobby palmist, and her male counterpart, who is constantly either playing with a banana, a metal scissor or offering me the fruit. But it’s the benevolence and natural sympathy in the way they treat each other that stands out the most. Alex also seems to change his clothes every two hours ore more often, so it’s probably his suitcase that he leaves behind then he walks back in the room newly dressed (and where he will leave to after the interview again).
ALEX: [comes in] Hi, sorry, we are a bit jet-lagged.
Yeah, I know. I read it on your Twitter page.
VICTORIA: Twitter? Twitterrific!
Do you both use your band’s Twitter account?
VICTORIA: It’s the two of us. It’s not complicated.
ALEX: [treating a banana with a scissor in his hands] Do you want to have this banana?
No, but thanks! And now you came over from the US to make the people here buy some records.
ALEX: To make people interested.
They already are. “Norway” went huge on all blogs across the world, including the European ones.
VICTORIA: It’s cool.
ALEX: It’s really to cool to see that many people on the Internet enjoying our song. But do people really read blogs? I’m just wondering. How many people read blogs?
The major ones are visited by thousands of people everyday. It’s comparable to a feature in one of the traditional music print publications and you reach people faster.
ALEX: Oh, I’m really into blogs. You don’t have to convince me.
What’s your favourite?
VICTORIA: You have a favourite?!
ALEX: I just read them. I recently decided that I love the Internet so I go around and read everything.
You recently decided to love it?
ALEX: Two months ago.
That’s pretty late.
VICTORIA: It’s good. Come on! We have three records and are just getting into the Internet. I do think it’s unhealthy to read the Internet though. It is as good as it is bad.
Did you ever lose yourselves in scanning the net for new music for hours?
ALEX: I like to finding an artist of any kind and to exploring them instantly. It goes in so many directions. You can get editorial pictures of them or fan pictures or the songs we are currently doing within five minutes.
So overall the Internet is a good thing for Beach House?
ALEX: We’ve always been an Internet band. We’ve never been on radio or TV.
VICTORIA: It’s all touring and the Internet.
ALEX: Our entire small career is based on it. [looking on the notes in my Moleskine] It’s kind like my handwriting…
VICTORIA: What’s your sign? Are you a Leo?
No, I’m a Aries. I was born in April. What does that mean in your eyes?
VICTORIA: I don’t know. Since you got the same handwriting I thought you’d be similar but you are not! You are better.
ALEX: Do you like to have a banana now?
Thanks again but no. Maybe it’s telepathy. I’ll close the notebook now and you’ll guess my next question. Go on.
ALEX: What does the title ‘Teen Dream’ mean?
No, you disappoint me a bit. But what dreams did you have as teenagers?
VICTORIA: I wanted someone to fall in love with me. I don’t think it would but I wanted it to happen. I’m still sort of unhappy.
Why?
VICTORIA: I’m just kidding.
ALEX: She’s undateable.
VICTORIA: Back to the teenage dreams…
ALEX: I think teens just don’t really know what they’re doing. Teenagers are confused as hell but have so many feeling.
And as kids they dream to be astronauts and fire fighters but as teens they don’t know what to do.
VICTORIA: When you’re a kid you want to be an astronaut but by time you get a teenager you just realize that you are lost in space. You’re in love with yourself but you don’t even know it since you still have a nursery ego. And then you realize you’ll not know yourself for the 15 more years. I’m just getting to understand myself at 28.
ALEX: Being a teen is really intense. Think of the way you love things – the deep passionate unconditional love you have for a certain artist, shirt or object like posters or skateboards. You can listening to an album 15 times.
VICTORIA: You can’t really have sex.
ALEX: But you make out really hard.
Maybe this has changed a bit recently.
VICTORIA: No, when you’re an adult you just have sex; you don’t make out.
ALEX: Don’t stop making out.
VICTORIA: You should make out more! So we made this record to can make out again.
ALEX: It’s an make-out record. No, this is even more: it’s a make-out and hard grinding record.
Since we three already know it should we make out with each other?
VICTORIA: You should make out with whatever you want.
ALEX: Here’s the banana!
How sweet of you. I guess it was the desire to get this teenage passion back that made you leave everything behind and live in a converted church for about a month to record the album there.
ALEX: Definitely. Part of the feeling we were cultivating during making this record was definitely being isolated. Because do you know this feeling: You are at a party and something really crazy is going on like everyone’s in a really wild mood. Then the one person comes in and it’s over. This feeling that you are really and wonderfully carried away with something and then everyone else can screw it up. I think this is one thing we really go after in isolation for the duration of writing and recording this record. It’s a lot of time and it’s just me and her with her drummer.
And your producer Chris Coady.
ALEX: Well, sort of producer. We are kind of our own producers.
VICTORIA: Chris is definitely a producer and helped us with many things on the album.
ALEX: But yeah, isolation and disappearing were a very big part of it.
The new songs are even more intense the ones before. Teen Dream reminds me of diving through a coral reeve during at night having only a small lamp with me. It’s dark, it’s heavy and oppressive but at the same time it’s very beautiful, too. How long did it take to make one of those songs?
ALEX: From the first nugget that began a song, to the end it was sometimes two weeks, sometimes six months. When we begin feeling a song – which is always an intense feeling – we have to make it huge without killing the feeling. Sometimes this takes a really long time, since you can’t force it, you may have to leave it and come back to it later. “Norway” became this whole other version, whole other thing, after we completely tore it down, because it didn’t had the right feeling.
VICTORIA: The real feeling is primarily based on feeling. God doesn’t feel right.
ALEX: We recorded “Norway” first singing it acoustically on a train and had all this magical feelings to it. We wanted to make this into a full electric song and used the same chord progression. For some reason when it went electric it felt way too dark. But after playing a lot of playing and working with different motives we finally realized how to keep the song and it’s energy alive even though it was now electric and had another chord progression but keeping the same melody.
VICTORIA: I think the melody was definitely the center point.
ALEX: Melody is always the center point.
So in the end it’s not exclusively trusting your own feelings.
VICTORIA: It’s it to 80 percent. But too, it’s a lot of thought.
ALEX: It’s like thought but never letting a thought be the center point.
The point is: Feelings are pretty unsteady and changing. You feel different to a record at day than at night.
VICTORIA: We are talking more about intuition. I agree with you but it’s useless to talk about artistic intuition. It stops meaning anything once the song is done.
ALEX: I’m just having this pretty crazy thought right now: The more I think about it, I feel I’m the morning side of the band and you’re the night side. I think people might listen more to music at day and more to lyrics at night.
VICTORIA: No, that’s ridiculous.
ALEX: I think tripping on coffee right now. It’s my seventh cup of coffee.
When did you wake up?
VICTORIA: 5 am first.
ALEX: We had this great conversation from 5am to 6:30. I said, “I heard you made a sound. Are you awake?”
VICTORIA: No, I said that first. It was like teenagers.
ALEX: We were talking about this one new song that we are writing right now and she was like, “That particular part of the song is like when the gangs meet in ‘Beat It‘.”, and I, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Victoria’s voice can make Beach House sometimes sound like a way bigger band. How is to work with her for you, Alex?
VICTORIA: You think it’s a shape-shifting voice? Cool.
ALEX: I’m just lucky. I’m voice obsessed, I wish I had a good voice. I think voices are the most important thing and I like thinking I encouraged her to become a better singer all the time. By hearing things that she does and…
VICTORIA: He’s a very supportive person.
Is he your favourite critic?
VICTORIA: He’s not criticizing.
ALEX: I’m more like a super fan.
VICTORIA: When we write together and I sing something and do really believe in it, then there’s probably a chance, that Alex definitely likes it, too. But if it doesn’t feel right, we say that it doesn’t.
ALEX: That happens not often. One of the reasons why I’m so lucky is that it’s very rare that Victoria likes something and I don’t. If she comes up with a melody then there’s no chance I wouldn’t like it.
So you have a telepathic but still discursive relation.
VICTORIA: We don’t over-analyze.
ALEX: It’s not that we tell us what we like and what not. It’s more about what’s lacking like, “Don’t you think it needs something to make it faster?”
VICTORIA: You can kill something if you talk about it too much. But we try a lot. There are various arrangements on the record which we had to throw out. On every song… [tapping on my Moleskine] Excuse me, can I refer to this as the record?
Of course, go on.
VICTORIA: We made sure that there’s nothing out we don’t believe in.
ALEX: This is the first record I am happy with.
You mean being happy with an album now or directly after finishing it?
ALEX: Being happy within the moment of finishing it. On the other ones I thought, “Well, that song didn’t work out. [laughter from the female side] That song sounds like shit. Oh man, that was a bad take.” [again laughter]
VICTORIA: Sorry, that I’m laughing that much but this is really funny.
In this case I wonder how’s working with him then?
VICTORIA: “Whatever let’s do it.” No, it’s good. We do balance each other very well.
ALEX: We still have no money or better this is the first record we some for.
VICTORIA: Why are you bringing money into?
ALEX: Because with this record we could get them right. With the others we had only one week in the studio trying to get the takes.
VICTORIA: Money buys time. We have more time with this and we have the experience to. We know what we did. You need the past. Deep down we knew that we needed those records to make this one, because you learn so many things through devotion [yes, that's the title of their 2nd LP as well]. We learned that you can’t listening to music for 13 hours and then be expected to make decisions. In the end it’s experience and money.
You need to have a had bad relationship to really enjoy a good one.
ALEX: You have to cut the banana before you eat it.
VICTORIA: I think you have to hate each other to love. You need poverty to make art.
Now that’s one of the music business’ most discussed theses. There are always people who will tell you that U2 can still do great records while being millionaires.
VICTORIA: Well, I think you indeed can but it’s a question of do you allow the money to completely satisfy you.
ALEX: There are lots of artists who’ve gotten successful and stayed really good artists.
VICTORIA: There are these last real rock stars. Nobody now making music is any longer obsessed with being a rock star. It depends on what you do. Money can make you lazy like relationships or food do, too. Basically everything that involves pleasure makes you a horrible person. So it’s not about property, pleasure is the actual problem.
How do you feel throwing your little beloved baby now into the cold money-lead free market and Internet?
ALEX: Oh, it did leak three weeks ago. It’s awesome anyway. We are constantly changing artists. We want to get out there, don’t want to keep going. We are happy to be able to talk with people about it. This is progressing. Now we can start touring and working on the next album.
VICTORIA: For a moment it hurts to get something leaked, because you put so much care in it and then it’s gone. But that lasts only for a day and then you accept it and see the good thing.
ALEX: It happens to every record now and it’s actually only good for us since we’ve always been an Internet band. Now people in the Internet are talking about it and hopefully more people will come to see us and enjoy our shows.
A part of the record that doesn’t work out that well on the Internet is the Teen Dream artwork. It’s looks like a all-white plane but a closer look reveals a Zebra [too, that's the title of the album's opener]. What was the idea behind this?
VICTORIA: The idea was to have a minimal undercover concept so the artwork doesn’t overwhelm the music.
ALEX: This is also going to sound stupid, but when you’ll look on it from far away you won’t see anything. And then you go in and it’s the pattern of the most fascinating animal which ever existed.
VICTORIA: The bird of deception.
ALEX: Yes, it’s the most deceptive, wild animal alive. I’m obsessed with music where you listen again and again and every time you go further and further into it. All my favourite songs didn’t reach my peak with me til I to listened to them ten times or fifteen. It might be our dream that people would have that same experience with our music, too, where every time they get another line of lyrics, every time they get another little musical thing until it reaches some crazy peak like they are obsessed with it. Pop music used to be more like that but now they want you to get it with the first or maybe the second time.
VICTORIA: And then you get it the first time and get never anything else ever again. It grabs you in the club but if you listen to it afterwards it feels like beer and cigarettes.
So how do you then feel being tagged as easy listening?
ALEX: Who did?
VICTORIA: We have been tagged as easy listening?
The press copies of the album are and as far as I am informed ‘Norway’ on iTunes was*, too.
ALEX: You fucking kidding me. We have to change that. That’s really dumb. [goes to his laptop]
VICTORIA: People are getting fired.
What is it instead?
ALEX: It’s rock and pop.
VICTORIA: Not even rock, just pop, really. Isn’t Kevin G easy listening?! One lesson we learnt from making this record: You can’t trust anyone! That’s just lazy. We are not acoustically folk musicians. It’s too heavy.
ALEX: It’s challenging listening.
I’m feeling sorry to put the interview to an end as sad as this one. Why don’t we talk about love to have a happy end?
VICTORIA: About love? The only interesting thing about love is making it.
ALEX: I think love is way more complex than it is retarded. It’s a hard and very painful thing but not beautiful.
VICTORIA: You can love many people at the same time but differently.
Teen Dream is released 25th January via Bella Union. The band are touring the UK throughout February, check their MySpace for details.
*Currently the song’s genre there is “Alternative”.
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