Beach House

There’s not much to discuss when a show like this is executed so simply and so absurdly well. Almost two weeks have passed since Beach House made their stop in Portland to stroke our egos about coffee and about how friendly and welcoming we are (“Portland is my heart,” Victoria Legrand said, or something like that—despite the elemental power of her singing voice, she’s a mumbler), and little’s come to mind. People ask me how the show was and I say it was fantastic; that’s about the extent of our interaction. There’s also some grinning in there, some frenetic, circular hand waving, but frowning wouldn’t make much sense and I’m Italian—so, you get the point.

Granted, people aren’t asking how the show went to be polite, people are asking because they want to be assured that Beach House is as good as they think they are—that Legrand’s voice is as effortlessly commanding as their recordings imply, that Teen Dream is both as starkly minimal and as basely absorbing in person as it is on plastic. The kids want to believe in this plain jane band, believe that what they hear really is magic—unadorned and affectless, not Sub Pop-sponsored or due to the fleeting confidence of a high-profile stint during that few weeks when it wasn’t creepy for thirty-somethings to drool over a seventeen year-old’s back muscles.

So almost two Saturdays ago I went alone to this Beach House show and emerged satisfied, clear-headed, not how I imagined I’d emerge given the Doug Fir’s downstairs bar staff. These are the lovely types of PDX crème de la crème that speed through stop signs on their bikes while screaming the c-word at drivers who don’t stop because they don’t have a stop sign, the types that lecture you about using your debit card to buy beer when they don’t hold tabs, because, Stupid Customer, it’s just too much work to run a card at a sold out show, though you just told me you’d tip extra to compensate, take this advice from someone obviously in possession of the trendiest fucking job in town, I mean, c’mon, look behind you babe, it’s BEACH HOUSE playing I’m getting paid to watch. Thus, with only one-third of my requisite music performance beer intake, refusing to buy any more and instead agree to just stand there stubbornly glowering like I’m watching an episode of Heores, one hour later I still greet the night air with a grin and deep inhalation, absent any ill will toward the establishment that housed such breathless rightness.

Beach House is as good as you hoped Beach House would be, or will be, if you have yet to see them. (Or are, if you are reading this while watching them play—which would be so fucking badass.) Which you should, because all expectations will be fulfilled, even those you hold deep down or pressed desperately to your chest, those you’d never reveal to a bartender in the basement of the Doug Fir.

Unfortunately, my lateness means I can’t recommend you go to see opener Bachelorette, who is exactly the sort of demure one-woman band you’d expect to loop little snaps and assorted, unabrasive mouth-noises over lilting acoustic guitar while opening for Beach House. She was quiet and brief and wonderful. Though I’m sure if you go to the show now they’ll still have the classy zebra-striped backdrop and shimmering octahedrons; Legrand might be wearing a white blazer with rolled up sleeves, which, admit it, is what you imagine she’d wear only to chastise yourself until you actually see her wearing it. Maybe not. They’ll play “Gila” and most of Teen Dream and something you won’t recognize because you’re not that big of a fan, at least until you see them, which you should, and will.

If only to prove me wrong.