Critiques CD: Beach House | Bloom

Beach House aimed to please with this highly anticipated followup to 2010’s Teen Dream. The songs are beautifully arranged, Alex Scally’s guitar work resonant as ever; and Victoria Legrand’s voice is, of course, nothing short of sublime. But Bloom is so close to Teen Dream both temporally and stylistically that it sounds less like a true followup and more like an addendum. Lovely as it is, there isn’t much new to speak of. The only real contrast between the two is Bloom’s tendency toward cliché pop tropes: the “my mother said to me…” moment that opens “Wild” is one drop that nearly contaminates the rest of the song; and the transparency of “Other People” feels foreign to the more romantic poeticisms we know and love in Legrand’s songwriting. All but for these few hiccups, Bloom promises to be yet another well-received venture for the duo.