Beach House Are High Drama at Kings Theatre on Tuesday Night
July 20, 2022
Beach House – Kings Theatre – July 19, 2022
In glittering black jackets, Beach House took the stage for the first of a sold-out two-night run at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre. Beach House have been in their High Gothic phase for a couple of albums now: 2019’s 7 polished their typically fuzzy, warm sound into something cold and dark, and this year’s Once Twice Melody continued the trend with a record that’s more elegant and grander. It’s Beach House’s movie album, with a cover bordered with gold. The darkness of the stage by lighting designer Jack Davis seemed to tuck in the audience like we were at a drive-in theater. With his solitary blue spotlights, and high kicks and hair swinging from lead singer Victoria Legrand, plus touring drummer James Barone’s pounding-heartbeat kick drums, Beach House were high drama at Kings Theatre.
They began interchanging Once Twice Melody cuts with older tracks, highlighting just how much Beach House, accused of often sounding the same, have evolved their sound over these past couple of albums. Davis’s slasher-flick blares of red light during “Pink Funeral” cut through a palette of cool colors, until the fog machine blurred the red and violet together into a Lynchian smear, contrasting the starry simplicity of older tracks like “Take Care,” during which a disco ball emerged from the damn floor, and “Space Song,” which TikTok has likely put on their set list for eternity. Near the end of the show, Legrand at her keyboard was projected behind her, looking like a cross, and then doubled behind her and then quadrupled behind that and so on ad infinitum, looking like a graveyard of Victoria Legrands, or the End of Evangelion.
Beach House always render themselves in gossamer silhouette—they arguably already have two of the most iconic silhouettes in music, guitarist Alex Scally slightly hunched and in profile, and Legrand, with her flowing hair and spidery fingers on the keyboard, cooing into the microphone. On the big screen, amongst Davis’s mist-smeared, bleeding neons and Barone’s booming drums reverberating against the band’s trademark drum machine, they brought their sound into full focus. —Adlan Jackson | @AdlanKJ
(Beach House play Kings Theatre again tonight.)
(Beach House play Roadrunner in Boston on Friday.)
Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @Tobytenenbaum
