Currently riding a wave of buzz in the indie scene, the Baltimore, MD based duo Beach House has been touring to support the release of their third album “Teen Dream.” This stop of their tour found them opening up for The National at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. I was not very familiar with their material, but my trusted friend has been trumping them up for some time, so I figured they were worth a listen. From what I’ve gleaned from my independent research, they are classified as ”dream pop”. I’m not quite sure what that means, but it has it’s own Wikipedia page, so surely it must be a legit genre. They remind me a bit of Mazzy Star, though if that statement was subject to debate it may not hold water.
The main thing I noticed about Beach House is that they are a quiet band. They are indisputably the quietest band I have recorded live. An unfortunate side effect of this is that people take this as an green light to strike up conversations while the band plays in the background. A sizable number of audience members made a furious bid to get up to the front of the stage when the band started, only to end up blabbing throughout the entire set, pausing only to politely applause between songs. This adversely affected my recording, as I have audio evidence of people conspiring to sneak marijuana into the show. I also learned about several awesome parties that I missed out on. I guess my invite got lost in the mail.
From this show is “Used to Be” and “Silver Soul”.
Prospect Park 07-27-10
Setlist
Better Times
Used to Be
Walk in the Park
Silver Soul
Norway
Master of None
Gila
Zebra
Heart of Chambers
10 Mile Stereo
Download: Beach House – Used to Be (Live)
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Download: Beach House – Silver Soul (Live)
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Same thing happened to me during The XX — stupid college girl yelling into her cell phone, “Go to where we WERE!” over and over again during a song, right behind me. Man, that pissed me off.
I still think I win out with the gripping cold cereal conversation that I unwillingly became privy too during the recent Dean Wareham does Galaxie 500 show. Conversation excerpt “…yeah…I don’t eat sugar cereal”. Of course this is during a Galaxie 500 show. Who in their lucid mind has the sense to get tickets to a sold out Galaxie 500 ala Dean Wareham show and then proceed to stand in the main-floor and get chatty about cereal. Who?! Who does that! I saw at least 5 people claw their own faces off in rage.
There was one song during this set that I really wanted to get a good recording of, and i got through 3 minutes of the song without any loud conversing then these 2 boneheads rolled up behind me and started yapping real loud. totally ruined it. i was so close…
I think I can top that, at the recent Bear In Heaven show here the couple in front of us were making out _THE WHOLE TIME_. Quiet, but still extremely distracting. Then there was the girl next to us who yelled at to the singer “how’s that mustache ride?” Oh Los Angeles, you always entertain me.