Once Twice Melody and Depression Cherries, or On The Desire to Dissolve
On Beach House, dream pop, and feeling small in a big world
It is December 2018, I am a twenty-one year old who for the first time had found her footing at work, and I am in the office with my coworker. It is the Friday before Christmas break, we are in our old offices — up on the fourth floor, the very last office to the right. Besides me is the tall, raking plant of my coworker that I had randomly adopted. The lights were turned on, warm fluorescent light tinting everything to a pale gold shade, and a comfortable lull filled both my coworker and I as we stared at our laptops, doing anything but work. I think I have a pullover on. My coworker has a hoodie I’ve come to associate with him. After some awkward conversation, and possibly the first time that I don’t him odd, that day I decided to start Beach House’s discography, and so I start with their self-titled debut record. The warbled organs fill my ears, coupled with drums so soft they feel like they come from somewhere within you, rather than your ears. Love you all the time, Victoria Legrand softly sings, even though... you’re not mine... I was already well acquainted with indie music then, so the mostly moody vibe of the song and its relatively unhurried structure didn’t bother me much; it was pleasant. Dreamy. Soft. Melancholy, almost nostalgic. But the part that truly got me — so early into my first listen! — was the very last line, where the music stops just before Legrand finishes her line You couldn’t lose me if you tried, a single moment before the d.
Something suddenly clicked. I understood something I couldn’t name. I only knew, on that winter day, that I wanted to be enveloped in this — whatever this was — preferably forever. It’s impossible to talk about “that thing” without speaking in grand turns of phrases. To say the music is undefinable would do it injustice, because it isn’t undefinable. It is this very specific thing; it is part of a musical substream; it is very much music-shaped. But what it does to you feels so enormous that anything you say is either slightly crazy to anyone who doesn’t get it, or not enough to anyone who does.
Here’s what it was like for me: I felt like how normal people do when they meditate. Listening to Beach House erased all thoughts, all worries I had. I found a deep sense of calm. It turned me inward, and inside of me, there was a blissful, beautiful nothing. It was a side of me I had never met before, someone I never was and could never be around other people. It was like being in a trance.
But it wasn’t the first time I had heard a Beach House song, nor was it the first emotion I felt while listening to them. My first Beach House song was Dark Spring, the first track off 7. Last.fm tells me it was two weeks before I listened to their first record and that fateful almost-Christmas day in the office. I remember it was in the evening, that it was close to my period which always leads me to a heightened emotional state, and the positive reception around their latest record at the time made me curious for a taste. It opens with these loud drums, and then a hazy electric guitar. The song was so overwhelmingly beautiful I cried. I felt like being forgiven. I felt like the song forgave me for everything I had ever done.
Sorry. I know this sounds slightly crazy and worrisome.
Their eighth and newest record Once Twice Melody is divided into four chapters, each of which distinct in tone but similar enough to make a whole, coherent book. If you have never heard of Beach House before, this record might only seem somewhat pleasant, or somewhat melancholy to you, blending together in a mush that is nice but requires you to be in a certain mood. To say it is atmospheric wouldn’t be quite correct; though they do evoke a mood, and are certainly good at that, the music never quite fades into the background either. In fact, it takes up so much of your attention that I often found myself stopping midway through my work, forced to take it all in, as though my head is pushed underwater and around me is thick, hazy music. You can make out instruments here and there — the guitar that defined so much of their last work is notably absent, the drumwork blending seamlessly with the high organs and keyboards — but nothing here quite stands out enough to really pinpoint it. The lyric animation video for New Romance, a highlight of the new record, embodies this haze quite well: colors swirl like they do when you keep your eyes closed in the light, the words appear and disappear with no outline, and there are no hard edges, just like Victoria Legrand’s vocals that fade in and out. The lyrics kind of make sense, and mostly don’t. Everything operates under its own kind of dream logic.
The feeling that Beach House’s music evokes is difficult to explain, Youtuber Middle 8 says on his video on Beach House. There’s nothing quite like them. That is not for lack of trying to define what “it” is, of course, he continues, with vocabulary that we know. If you asked the Internet what that thing is that Beach House embody so well, what draws people to their music, knowingly or unknowingly, a spectrum energes: “mellow warm depressive embrace” a comment reads on Lemon Glow, “loud whisper in a quiet place” reads the top comment on the full stream of 2012’s Bloom; “an unexplainable sadness” reads one of the comments of Middle 8’s video, “but when the night comes i feel so empty,” it says on a slowed & reverb remix of their most popular song Space Song, and “makes you realise the things we could've done right with our life”. Stories of breakup, stories of death are shared freely in the comment section. In the same space, there’s also place for the extreme opposite: “purest bliss and peace” on a Myth video, “perfectly placed on a border between melancholy and sheer happiness” on the official video of the same song.
Often barely audible or secondary lyrics, a highly emotive vocalist, melodies that repeat or stretch towards nowhere, atmospheric songs with no intent on memorable hooks, a meticulous eye for aesthetics: these are, more or less, the components that make up a Beach House song. In this sense, they have connective tissue with the dream pop genre and its forebearers such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, or Cocteau Twins. The line between shoegaze and dream pop is often blurry, but if I had to draw a line in the sand, I would say dream pop still adheres somewhat to pop music, be it in pristine song production or songs that almost sound like they’re chart toppers five galaxies away, while shoegaze leans stronger to the rock element. Not that it matters, because it scratches the same itch, exposes us to the same feeling. What these groups all have in common is the fans’ reception: in trying to define the thing that the music makes them feel in concrete terms, they end up in this spectrum of pure emotion, a place where rational thinking fades and awe sets in. It’s not just random Youtube users: “Nature metaphors come so readily to mind when listening to shoegaze—clouds, stars, skies, storms, oceans, whirlwinds, maelstroms—that it’s easy to believe that, like the weather it evokes, it just sort of happens,” is the opening sentence of the review of Slowdive’s 2017 self-titled record on Pitchfork. Stars, skies, oceans, storms — all of these are forces bigger than us, barely in our control. Humanity cannot subdue it, like it has subdued animals and other human beings; humans either live with them, or destroy them, which invariably pulls the ire of these forces, like they are sentient and alive. More than two millennia after polytheistic religions, the unpredictability of nature (or, perhaps more accurately, the blissful ignorance of corporations and mass-scale destruction late stage capitalism deals to this planet and the direct consequences suffered by it, especially in the global south) still lends a myth towards nature. Regardless of whether someone believes in a God, multiple gods, or not, nature has a way of making each and every human feel small, insignificant. And in shoegaze and dreampop we just happen to have it captured in sound.
What else do you do if not capitulate in front of it? Feel yourself erode to nothing until finally you are no longer you, but part of the world at large?
It’s not just music fans that have trouble naming this “thing”, this undefinable emotion that makes you feel small and as a part of the world writ large, a grand yet minor emotion. (Try to explain what a Mark Rothko painting does to you!) One such group of people that come close to this thing are ones interested in psychedelics: LSD, acid, or magic mushrooms. They name it ego death. Originally termed by Jung, it was originally meant to denote a “fundamental transformation of psychology”; in a drug-induced ego death, there are many first-hand reports saying they came away from it fundamentally changed. Ego death is also part of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey: the old self dies for a new personality to be born, one that is so changed that the hero is ready to vanquish the threat fully. In all of these instances, though, it is more a lid for the thing rather than it being the thing. A psychedelic ego death is said to eradicate your concept of identity fully while it leaves you with nothing but the world, a deep sense of belonging with it. I would describe it as feeling empty but also completely full at the same time; or how about By reaching this state, where we have no choice but to let go of all that we are and to make peace with the infinite offers unparalleled potential to positively redefine how we live when we come back? Sound familiar, doesn’t it?
In this life, this capitalist society, everybody’s forced to compromise; we instinctively feel that we have to reduce ourselves, constantly change something about ourselves to be better and prettier and more popular, be as updated as everyone else on an unknown OS with an equally dubious patch system. As Mark Fisher puts it, it is the subordination of the self into a reality that is infinitely plastic, capable of reconfiguring itself at any moment. In this vein, it is no surprise that a lot of self-help often outright tells us to rationalize our emotions, or hold onto them and then let go. Elsewhere the suggestion lies in the self rather than emotions alone: Let go of everything that doesn’t serve to you at this time. In order to live well, so it seems, we have to die a thousand tiny ego deaths, become unrecognizable to ourselves in order to interact with the world at large and be a part of something we recognize is an utter mess. When asked about ego death, Lobster Man himself talks of the collapse of every assumption that forms our identity, our understanding, to a Self from which the ego is built again. A highly traumatic event when it happens to us, but even we let it happen to us, it is hard: It damn near kills [Pinocchio], he says, to go down to the underworld, he dies and is revived.
It’s not that the action itself, this thing, is wrong. Since time immemorial, people have gotten high to communicate with gods, and in turn have lived and moved as part of the ecosystem, always in respect to forces bigger than them. I truly believe that it is in our nature to want to be part of something bigger, belong to the biggest tribe possible like the social animals that we are; in the postmodern world, where individualism is prized as the most important, the urge of community has become fuzzy, blurry, outright unrecognizable. And where people find a positive sensation, capitalism isn’t too far away. I’m not just talking about the sunset lamp here, but ethereal oils, vaginal eggs, angel sprays for the aura, and crystals that take all worries and evil things away from you — it’s a lucrative market in German-speaking countries than it seems to be in North America and English-speaking countries at large: Esoterik it is called in German, but would probably be called holistic medicine in English speaking countries. These tools are all meant to help us to live through life a little happier, a little better. If you possess healthy skepticism, that’s where it ends, but when you had a rough period, you’ll cling onto anything, says Johannes Fischer in his book, New Cage: Esoterik 2.0 (sadly only in German). If you are already in a vulnerable position, you’ll look at something bigger than you to comfort you. The implication these bogus products have is that somebody else can take your worries for you if you empty yourself enough, and as a direct consequence, somebody else does the thinking, and eventually, the being that was once you. Assisted ego death? Maybe, but the wallet sure is wide open. Even if we can never really say what the “thing” is — death drive, ego death, dream pop, Beach House — there’s always some company preying on it. There’s always something that wants you disconnected from reality, sedated from what is happening, asleep to very real nightmares.
Not too long ago, my best friend and I were curious at what point I started to not just like, but love my current favorite The Boyz member. (To be precise, I was curious about it and my friend happened to be supportive like she usually is). For around half an hour or so, we rummaged in our server, digging up old messages of mine. Some of my messages were so absurd I could only laugh; none of them I remembered. To acknowledge that the first lockdown was traumatic to me — even if I am well-aware just how privileged I was to begin with to be able to work from home, at a job where I was never at risk of being let go of — is still something I’m reluctant to say. But what else is it if not that? I wouldn’t leave my room. I gained weight. I was harsher than before, disconnected with myself I hadn’t been since my teenage years. My hair got unruly. I hated the way I looked. I hated the way this city was run, the way this country lied about so many things, the way this world was, and how incredibly useless I felt and was (and am) in the face of it. Spring of 2020, or to be precise: from March 13, 2020 on, when Austria as officially in lockdown, that is a time I do not remember very well, despite the fact that I have always counted my time in music, could tell you all the groups and artists I was listening to during this time. The person I was during that time is gone; so is the person before it. I can feel them in fits and starts; I recognize them when I answer someone in a firm and cold manner, the same way you feel cold creep up your fingertips. I can see them when I am caught in reverie, vivid flashbacks that have me gasping for air. All the while, some song plays on my headphones, the world moves on, and I’m lucky I like my reflection enough.
When Once Twice Melody dropped, I felt this overwhelming sense of sadness, nostalgia for something I never had. It’s music so beautiful it aches in your chest, melodies so life-affirming you are content to let everything go and just breathe. Earlier that week I had seen my chest visibly thrum from my heartbeat for the first time in my life. At some point while listening to Once Twice Melody, I glanced down at it, hoping I would see it again. I was hoping I’d be back in that winter of 2018 with this record; the album itself feels like a best of with all-new material. Whatever new was tried here blends in perfectly with their pre-established framework. You’d think it would be easy for me to go back to this state, this magic, this thing, and sure enough, I listen to the record every day because not much else interests me these days musically (besides excellent Korean Pop B-sides by excellent girl groups, that is).
I didn’t see my heart beat. I didn’t go back to it. I joke that I’ve become like ice, but maybe I’ve hardened to colder things, past the point of no return, nothing dissolve, no ego to kill. Maybe the album reminded me of the person I’ve once been. This time, there was no forgiveness. Not that I look for it.
Sorry. I know this sounds slightly crazy and worrisome.