The new Beach House record 7, (well it's their seventh album), is an easy thing to admire and respect but I'm finding it rather more difficult to love. And that's not for the want of trying. I've listened to it several times since it was released a couple of weeks ago and as seductive as its glossy surfaces seem, all sleek melodies and electronic pulses I find it somewhat difficult to warm to because try as I might I can't locate its human heart.
Electronically generated albums naturally can and should have a human heart and the human instinct. Two of the great pioneers of the form that Beach House work within, Kraftwerk and Suicide, always had that in spades. This Beach House record doesn't, certainly not to the extent that other albums of theirs have, 2016's Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars to name just two.
So while I'm still open to persuasion from 7 currently that's just about the mark I'd give it. So while they are an indisputably great band this is an accomplished record I'd say but not a particularly great one, feeling most of all like a gleaming black car, (and hey there's a song called Black Car on the record to underline the point), everything in its place sliding off an ultramodern production line. State of the art, admirable, but not particularly memorable.
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