Beach House Devotion. Beach House is playing Red Rocks in September. Tickets are 87 dollars. I am betting they won't sell out. Well Beach House is not playing Red Rocks. Vampire Weekend is playing Red Rocks. Their tickets are 87 dollars. Possibly they will sell out. Are there than many kids with long sleeve striped polo shirts in Denver? I hear Vampire Weekend in Chipotle though. Rush tickets for their Red Rocks show go upwards of 1800 dollars, but at least with a Rush show you may get projections of passages from 'the Fountainhead' laser projected on the flatirons and Neil Peart will look creepy all through the show. Will Vampire Weekend hand out 20% off coupons to Abercrombie & Fitch? This is the second Beach House record. I saw them on tour for this record. I think. They played the Hi-Dive, it was considerably less than 87 dollars. They wore white suits and had a disco ball and it was glorious actually and I really should have become obsessed at that point, but I did not. Second song. First one was a tender ballad. Next one is a tender ballad with a drum machine. her voice is vacant and Nico-esque but there is a warmth to the proceedings, we aren't walking around wishing we were listening to Consolidated. Pretty piano. They look like hippies too, the same as Candy Claws but they must favor the sedatives over the lysergics. Big moody chorus with backing vocals unsuitably muted to create atmosphere. So lovely. The Hi-Dive theater is tiny. I went there recently by mistake. I was intending to go see the Trash Can Sinatras at the Larimer Lounge and on autopilot without thinking I ended up at the Hi-dive where a load of local bands were playing their uniquely dire dirges and I was squinting towards the stage and all through the crowd thinking "Hey that's John Douglas, I should go say hello". But it wasn't John Douglas, it was some random person from Denver, who may have been flattered by my attention but probably did not deserve it. Could I really point John Douglas out in a crowd of more then 2 people? Unlikely. But I do really enjoy the last Trash Can Sinatras record, this is how an old band should play songs written by an older band. Beach House are still reasonably young I imagine. Their music has an old soul. I could see lame old rock bands like Primus thinking they were pretty alright. Are they still on Carpark records? Carpark used to be an exclusively electronic label, I have a few releases from the early years. In my earlier guises, where I wrote essentially the same entries as I write here, let's face it all of my entries are the same, I wrote about Marumari The Wolves Hollow and i still love that record and I still love that his mother produced the album cover work. It might have been even more awesome if his mother had produced the record but you know. This isn't electronic other than they probably plug their instruments into an electrical outlet but it is from Baltimore. Carpark is from Washington D.C. I also wrote about Jake Mandell. I really liked that album as well. I don't own anything else on Carpark. Lovesongs for Machines. I was ridiculed on I Love Music for like Carpark records. I have never recovered, obviously. Next track. More morose keyboards more tender monotonic vocals, more loveliness all around. When they play live they create a roller disco atmosphere and the skeletal remnants of song seem more fleshed out, the bones sport sinews and tendons and semblances of musculature. i am not sure how this song will go over in Red Rocks, perhaps if they project passages from Paul Theroux novels on the screen. Some bit where he's on about his sexual exploits, he's always on about his sexual exploits so anything really. Or something from A Diary of a Century by Edward Robb Ellis. it is amazing how really poor writers can sustain a career as a writer. Edward Robb Ellis kept his diary for a very long time and it summation, at the end, he seemed most proud of the fact that he slept with a lot of women even though he was particularly unimpressive, physically speaking. His description of Kruschev at the Waldorf was great comedy but by comparison this site is Gogol. next beach House track, a bit more pep, her voice leaned out by effort, strident and spectral. Nice. Update from the Pro-Med list? There are a great many undiagnosed fish die-offs all across the country, most are attributed to unnaturally warm waters and depleted oxygen content. Oh and more bats are dying from White Nose Fungus. There are suggestions to place Wax Worm Larvae in caves, or to install a bat house near your home or to install very large dehumidifiers in caves to make things uncomfortable for the fungus but who knows. At Junkscience.com they seem most sensible since the fungus doesn't actually kill all of the bats they make the sane suggestion that the remaining Bats will be stronger for the effort because only the non-susceptible individuals will have survived. But then they are not likely searching for a research grant. Are their songs about Bats on this record? No. I can't quite make out the lyrics, it is a gently slurred delivery she has with enough reverb to make it sound dramatic and grand. They could soundtrack a Sophia Coppola movie in the future. i was watching the Fox Movie Channel and they recently showed The Virgin Suicides and there was Peter Bogdanovich going on about "yeah, it's ok, I know Sophia, I starred in her first film when she was nine but Virgin Suicides is only ok" which it is. Ii watched it, the males in it are just dreadful and Kathleen Turner, ugh! But there was some fanboy blogger on there talking about the socio-political impact of the film or how it is a flawed masterpiece or it's disturbing ambiance and then he moved onto the soundtrack by Air. It was disgusting. Critics are a revolting breed. Why would anyone want anyone to consider themselves to be objective about art? Is art not the most emotional and visceral of topics? I enjoy the fact that I am enraptured by Beach House, there isn't any objective reason to explain my reaction it is entirely emotional and the fact is I could play this for 99.3% of the people I know and they would not have any reaction to it at all and that's beautiful. I can't sit atop some soapbox and cite statistics or graphs and explain to them how they should be reacting, they just react. Of course they have biases and prejudices but so does everyone and the fact that anyone likes anything is a triumph of the imagination what with all of the manufactured guilt and fear of the apocalypse that is present today, better to have art to lose yourself in than to revel in its greater importance to the cause. but anyhow I bet Sophia Coppola is a fan, and Paul Dano. The hated Paul Dano. Heart of Chambers is playing now. An attempt at a pun? Not very funy. But they don't do comedy, see. What will they do at Red Rocks to rile up the crowd? Unknown, maybe she will appear onstage wearing those frilly, lace gloves like the Arcade Fire wear to show people they mean it. I remember seeing the Throwing Muses open for REM on the Green tour. My first year at University, I saw friends from high school in the crowd, I had just discovered Throwing Muses. Throwing Muses didn't seem to have won anyone over that night, my brother thought they were men. it was at Pine Knob. A poor man's Red Rocks. Pine Knob was a converted landfill turned now into an amphitheater/ski hill. Ski Hills in Michigan are different than Ski Hills in Colorado. I've never ben on a real Ski Hill. Red Rocks is not a Ski Hill but there are Dinosaur tracks that were laid down 150 million years ago. Honestly if I was at the Beach House show I'd feel a tug towards looking at the Iguanodon tracks alongside the mountain rather than looking at the Paul Dano quotes projected on the Flatirons but that is just me, I'd feel cheered having a beautiful soundtrack while staring at the Sauropod indentations. Astronaut is just finishing now, so pretty, ponderous and delicate. Very much unlike Sauropods I would imagine but then perhaps Sauropods were more graceful than you'd guess. Next track, so beautiful. Is it difficult to sound vacant, unengaged, staring into the void-ful on every song and not come off pretentious and dull? It is. I wouldn't ever consider using those adjectives. They have a sense of lightness of touch. There isn't a melodramatic form of posturing here, not like say a Cranes album because the music is basic and inviting, it is just her voice that seems intimidatingly melancholic. But it isn't it's lovely, sadness is more natural than happiness. Really. I rarely feel happy but I'm often consumed with melancholia not because I am depressed but because I am reflective and curious and observant of those around me who are seemingly endless in their pursuit of happiness. Better to embrace your natural somberness. Last track, finger snaps, ginger taps on a keyboard and echoed, atmospheric guitar. Really nice. if Jason Pierce produced Beach House they would turn to an abomination, if Sonic Boom produced Beach House it could be amazing. When you look at the stars tonight after making love to the leafy spurge on the side of the road lie back and dream of the perfection of inadequacy and create an image of this album in your mind and be contented at the wonder of aesthetic humility. Is that pretentious? Or is that merely incoherent?