It’s a rhyming tale about an “auburn” female centerpiece, a tale that leaves the listener’s imagination flooded with a rich, if arcane array of textured symbols, of which ‘auburn’ and ‘ivory’ are but two.  Full text...

Slide guitars and thick swathes of organs make up most of the instrumentation, the latter bolstering the simple percussions and chintzy bossa nova rhythms with their own pulses and slow oscillations. While this is one of those records that hangs together like a fog, certain moments still peek out.  Full text...

Elegantly draped with stylized sounds and slow, gorgeous melodies, it is a near masterpiece. And while the flippant listener may write the band off as style over substance, this is erroneous- the rhythm box beats, washes of organ, and reverb-doused slide guitars are the devices of impeccably well-written songs.  Full text...

Each of Beach House's nine tracks crawls to a slurred metronome which is so slow and coagulated with hiss as to defy monotony. Thud becomes thrum and musty layers of droning texture are slathered on to maintain the gossamery drift.  Full text...

Beach House is a mood piece, finding a specific tone and lingering there for its entirety. Whereas a similarly slow-motion band such as Low can demand close attention with devastating wordplay, the fuzzy vagaries here might dissipate under intense scrutiny.  Full text...

The debut from this Baltimore boy-girl duo is all narcotic dreaminess, with enough keyboard drones, sideways effects and well-modulated eeriness to suggest a more ramshackle Slowdive or the Fiery Furnaces on codeine.   Full text...