Day 256: Beach House – Thank Your Lucky Stars

Since the whole point of this project has been to discover new things or listen to music that should be a part of every music dork’s curriculum, I don’t really feature my favourite bands or artists that much. Beach House is definitely one of them. I’ve loved them for such a long time, I can’t even remember when I first started listening to them. Today I needed something good and familiar, so I went for a less listened to album, Thank Your Lucky Stars.

Album cover courtesy of Sub Pop

Beach House, who I’ve listened to a lot but know absolutely nothing about, are apparently a duo consisting of singer Victoria Legrand and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Alex Scally. They were both in a band called Daggerhearts, who disbanded due to dysfunctionality, so the pair went off as a duo to do their own thing.

Released in October 2015 as the band’s sixth studio album, Thank Your Lucky Stars came out only two months after their previous album Depression Cherry, but it was still a completely separate entity: the band said it’s "not a companion to Depression Cherry, or a surprise, or b-sides", but a whole album on its own.

This album is a pretty classic example of what Beach House do: it’s simultaneously a big sound and a small one, a sad one and a happy one, it’s close and tangible but also sounds a bit otherworldly, like something you would hear in a dream. There are other dream pop bands, but there’s no one else who sounds like Beach House. I think that’s what I like about them so much. They make this atmospheric, almost cinematic alien music that feels like you’re entering a different world. It’s also a band who you could easily imagine playing at the Roadhouse on Twin Peaks, which is also one of my favourite categories of music.

Thank Your Lucky Stars isn’t one of their best albums to me, but that’s a high bar to clear, since I think some of their other work is in my list of best albums of all time. It’s still a good listen, though, and songs like “Elegy to the Void” and “Somewhere Tonight” are great. This one is an 8.5/10.