In Revue- 'Depression Cherry' (Beach House)

The last time, or maybe the time before (it's hard to say with certainty), that I was driving the two-hour stretch of I-70 from Columbia, Mo to Kansas City I had a cheaper than cheap pair of knockoff Raybans on. "POLYVINYL," a record label home to bands I love such as American Football was imprinted in white lettering on the black sides. I had just turned off the podcast Hollywood Prospectus featuring some witty repartee about the failings of True Detective Season 2 when I switched over to Beach House’s fifth LP Depression Cherry. Given that I was gazing intently through the small "slit" in the glasses, just above the bridge of these faux-Bans, the timing could not have been better.

Such an innocuous thing was so cosmically perfect because that sort of staring, peering through minutiae with the intensity to cause blindness, is the kind of focus it would take for someone to notice the movement in Beach House's sound over those aforementioned five albums. Beach House, the band’s 2006 debut, might sound like its guitar is on loan and its rickety drum machines from a flooded Guitar Center, but I’m still reminded of the halo effect around light poles on an empty street of a mid-sized city (pop. 100,000) at 2 a.m. on a Sunday night; Bloom from 2012 also does this. It’s like this dulled warmth, perhaps being hugged by someone with snow gloves on, that’s been in Beach House’s blood since the beginning. The gloves have gotten bigger and a little more expensive perhaps, but you can still feel this warmth. A writer for Stereogum, whose name I am genuinely forgetting, compared its subtle expansion of sound to shifting plate tectonics and I think that’s as good a metaphor as will ever be developed to describe its “change” in sound.

The new "accouterments" to Victoria LeGrand and Alex Scally's summer home are first single "Sparks"'s shoegaze, the Perrey-esque synth fade ups on "Space Song," an insistent ticking in "Wildflower" that takes me back to Drive, a propulsive quality in the first five seconds of "Bluebird" that brings to mind Dan Deacon. All of it is fairly new, but none of it feels that way. At no point do the extra wrinkles in the pages make the text unreadable. Shoegaze has so often been concerned with sonic textures that the peeling guitars and vocal shards of "Sparks" make sense. It’s evident that Jean-Jacques Perry's defining ambient piece "Prelude au Sommeil" has its soft hand pushing up the synth fader in "Space Song" because both efforts leave you breathless. Not in the sense that you're choking. No no. That you literally have exhaled your entire body in response to how tranquil the sound is. You have to push the air out just to make room for comprehending the moment. I think of Drive when I hear the ticking of "Wildflower" because it has similar noirish uneasiness. What you once knew to be true and could hold in your hands is slowly slipping out. Which is an awful, terrifying feeling.

If all of this makes Depression Cherry sound obtuse or fey, it isn't. For as airy and ethereal as LeGrand's voice is, she's incredibly grounded. Before she even gets to "Beyond Love"'s chorus she sings "I'm gonna tear off all the petals from the rose that's in your mouth," a detail so lived in and specific you take it for truth. A married couple in "PPP" (Piss Poor Planning) is looking into each other’s eyes and struggling to see anything worth loving anymore, "It won't last forever, or maybe it will" is the figure-8 elliptic she deflatedly croons. The avian of "Bluebird" can't seem to take flight before the penultimate song's trickling keys evaporate into the night air. 

Only on closer "Days of Candy" does the album shuffle off its lyrical mortal coil. And then, it does so by including a 24-part harmony from the Pearl River Community College singers and stating "the universe is riding off with you." Its part hymn, part nursery song, part dirge and one of the most hypnotically ornate things the band has done. Drum machines crackle on a sort of delay and LeGrand's voice echoes like she's the last person on Earth trapped at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. When Beach House goes big, it goes big in a way that would be frightening if for not how lovely it sounds.

And yes love is a common topic, but the love of these characters is just as likely to wither inward as it is to expand outward. What is a warm love song one minute can become a cold elegy the next. Alex Scally's gently flitting guitar can grow loud enough to drown out the hum of an entire city. With Beach House you can see all of these mammoth changes coming from a mile away; you just have to look closely.

In Revue- 'Summertime '06' (Vince Staples)

I can't pretend to know Vince Staples' story. His life is not my life. His city's not my city. His skin's not my skin. After the first bars of the sweeping Summertime '06 opener "Lift Me Up" there are miles between us. "I'm just a n**** until I fill my pockets and then I'm Mr. N****, they follow me while shoppin'." That's something I've never experienced. I've also never found "another dead body in the alley," as the fever dream "Birds & Bees" tells us. My granddad wasn't in a gang. None of my friends have been murdered. I don't have any real animus toward the police, past a few tickets here and there. Despite our similar ages (22 for Staples, 24 for me) we seemingly couldn't be more different.

But I identify with Summertime '06. Each barb from Staples stings me in a way lines don't always do. I've had that hopeless, crushing feeling that blindsides Staples in the defiantly prideful, slow moving "C.N.B." Maybe you know the kind? Where you roll out of bed with pep in your step only to think this is pointless, there’s no promise in the outside world. You'd rather say "f*** it," than fight.  

That misanthropy rings out with the pots and pans percussion of "Jump Off the Roof." Staples considers the title action to feel alive; to snap out of the drug-addled coma he's fallen into. On the second disc's metallic "Like It Is" Staples admits with deflation the streets are the only things worth loving. For all the danger he knows they promise he tries to connect with them just to have a tangible connection. Like the imagined suicide of "Jump Off the Roof," he's risking everything for the minimal return of feeling something. 

Summertime '06 isn’t exactly the kind of album people rally around. Over the course of 59 minutes and two discs it features mounds of insular, world weary, desperate stuff. One of the lightest moments, "Summertime," still has Staples murmuring over a wheezing organ sound: "My feelings told me love is real, but feelings known to get you killed." To end, he begs "don't leave me alone in this cruel, cruel world." This is his debut LP and he's ending a disc on that note, a desperate send-off scrawled in the margins of scrap paper. 

Why is this album worth listening to then if there's little to root for? In part because Staples is so committed to the material. He snarls "can a motherf***er breathe?" in the aforementioned "Lift Me Up," a stunning bit of unguarded confusion to rival Ab-Soul's in "Ronald Reagan Era." You can easily picture him doing the money dance during "Get Paid," his voice cocky and drawling out "paiiiiiiiddd." One of my favorites is first single "Señorita" where he goes into hyperdrive to match Future's Autotuned double-time. "F*** ya dead homies, run ya bread homie, got some lead for me, I'm on Artesia, parked in my Beamer bumping my own s***," he spits without taking a rest. When he returns to the delivery at the end of verse two, you're left dizzy and dazzled. Ditto to the way he pronounces "North" as "norf" and pauses to let the burbles of "Surf" float to the murky surface. Typically those are the thrilling moves of a vet who has figured out his or her strength, not an artist on their first full-length.

The production though does have a veteran’s name attached and it adeptly matches Staples' grim view. No I.D. made his name with the warm soul of Common's Resurrection but his work on Summertime '06 threatens to cast a long shadow over past boom bap. Run the Jewel's post-apocalyptic detritus is a clear influence, so too is the blackened spring of ScHoolboy Q's "Prescription/Oxymoron." Along with cloud rap innovator Clams Casino and trap deconstructionist DJ Dahi, I.D.’s created a work that's equal turns alluring and repulsive. The weird aquatic sirens at the beginning of "Norf Norf" send listeners running to the hills and "Loca" draws them back with emphatic handclaps and sensual "baby babies." "Might Be Wrong" best splits the difference. It starts with Haleef Talib's vocals floating above trickles of keyboard and heavy strings before swooping into a valley of bass moans. In exactly four minutes we hear the come up and the fall back down. We're taught "Hands up, don't shoot. Shot. Stand your ground. Blacks don't own no ground to stand on so we stand on our words." All without Staples saying anything.  

Whenever Staples does speak, it's well worth listening to. Your ears perk up, even when he's staring straight at you saying "I done seen my homies die then went on rides to kill 'em back. So how you say you feel me when you never had to get through that?" Who the hell has been through that? Odds are 99% of the people listening will never know that deeply visceral and profound of pain. But there you are, nodding along to every missive like you know exactly what the hell he is talking about. Empathizing isn’t really as hard as it seems. Geography, life story and skin color be damned. Connections are always possible.