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Feb 22, 2022 By Laura Studarus

Beach House members Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally acknowledge that, like everyone else, they have been impacted by the string of devastating global events—and that the extended shutdown gave them time to explore the musical nuances of what would become their eighth studio album, Once Twice Melody. But more than make music about disaster, what they crafted was a tribute to where their imaginations took them while everyone else was getting sick of the phrase “unprecedented times.” Even though that meant making peace with the fact COVID would forever be part of their story.

“You can’t not mention it,” says Legrand. “We’ve all been affected—and the restrictions caused us to shift in little various ways.”

There’s no arguing the duo has innate sense of their wheelhouse. But despite a steady clip of releases, beginning with their Spartan self-titled album in 2006, they’ve also allowed themselves a fair amount of reinvention. (Something that Scally emphasizes should be normalized in any creative field.) After the equally hushed follow-up Devotion, the duo signed to Sub Pop and produced Teen Dream, an album that they joked in interviews was meant to fill bigger spaces, and dispel any rumors they were just hippies in floaty dresses. When the venues got a little too big for their comfort while supporting Vampire Weekend, they scaled back, playing smaller rooms and more dates as they released the equally bombastic Bloom, and stripped down twin Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars.

But even the My Bloody Valentine- reminiscent wall of sound that became their seventh album 7, never shook the core foundations of the band: two people, in a room, staring at each other and embracing the push and pull as they create something new. It’s that outlook that Legrand believes allowed them to keep creating, even as the world was rapidly changing around them.

“It was in 2018 when we started feeling the beginnings of the next thing, whatever that was going to be,” says Legrand. “So we were bizarrely lucky, because we were already working. And so, when the pandemic started, and everything began shutting down, we were already in our studio, this place that we’ve created in Baltimore. The door was already locked…And here we are three years later. Two of those three years were in this pandemic and living as people in the pandemic and as artists throughout it. But we feel bizarrely lucky and grateful that we had art to make, because I know a lot of people didn’t, and I think a lot of people were paralyzed creatively.”

Their time sequestered was more than an act of fight or flight, even if the act of creation did act as a solid distraction. While Legrand has found joy in watching birds, and Scally has been busy challenging himself by learning Bach pieces, despite being admitting he’s not a great pianist.” (“mathematical and peaceful and memorization feels good,” he notes) ultimately, creating music is simply embedded into who they as people—an act they weren’t willing to give up.

“We’ve been living for almost half of our lives now has been in this band,” she says. “And so, it’s the making of music, the processes of it, the touring, the exchanges, the thoughtfulness, the creating the artwork, the animations, the video. All of it combined. I can’t separate it from life. I just think that creating, period, is it for us. An anchor, the art of celebrating something. Just playing the organ or playing the guitar, or just expressing something is a sign of life…This stuff we’re making, every recording is going to live beyond us. And that that’s just a totally crazy thing to think about too. But the urge to make it I think, is very much tied to the urge of life.”

Released in four chapters, Once Twice Melody is perhaps Beach House’s most expansive album to date. Legrand’s sinuous alto and Scally’s guitar work is reimagined through a series of lenses. “Sunset,” a rare acoustic guitar sees the pair embrace a sense of stillness and finality, with Legrand asking to “lay me where the flowers grow.” Meanwhile, vocoder-heavy “Runaway” explores the flipside of the coin, a desire to run anyway cost. And in a band first, legendary composer David Campbell (Beck, Adele, Billie Eilish) was recruited to arrange live strings, lending many of the album’s 18 tracks a haunted, film noir ambience.

It’s no mistake that on the album’s press sheet they mention “While there are a lot of new sounds, many of the drum machines, organs, keyboards and tones that listeners may associate with previous Beach House records are still present throughout many of the compositions.” But in a first, Scally and Legrand were producing each nuance themselves, alone in the studio day after day.

“In terms of creative spirit, I think everyone just does what’s natural to them,” says Scally. “I think I need to do the daily [work] because maybe I don’t have the voice of God come through me as much—so I have to make sure I’m there when it happens, whereas like certain people are like electric like lightning rods.”

But when Legrand mentions flow of ideas through the process, it’s with a sense of reverence and curiosity. The way she sees it, the muses don’t always deliver everything they need—and it’s the band’s job from release to release to chase those ideas that don’t always make it into existence.

“That’s the insatiable appetite of the lofty artist,” she laughs, making it clear that it’s the process, not herself that she takes seriously. “There’s this kind of pleasant disappointment. But I think that we already wanted to go to some exciting places. Without a doubt, subconsciously there were moments for the last two years as were as we were continuing to develop everything and continue to write new songs that the muses hadn’t described in 2018, things that would become more gifts to us, and more ideas and that would be written in 2020 and 2021.”

But having the luxury of a prismatic smear of uninterrupted studio time brings up an interesting dilemma: how do you know when you’re done?

“I was just trying to think back on all the moments, which is hard to even parse out,” says Scally. “But I wouldn’t say there’s a defined moment, but it was kind of a long burn so long. It’s a long road.”

At that, Legrand gently contradicts her bandmate. Yes, writing a single song—let alone an entire album—is an extraordinary accomplishment. But for her, pushing through meant celebrating each micro-milestone along the way.

“This journey was the longest of all the ones we’ve made,” she says. “It had the most twists and turns and there were times where it felt endless. But then, we’ve just learned to hear that voice that says ‘it’s over.’ There has to be that moment, in order for you not to completely fully lose your mind. You have to create a closure for yourselves. I think deadlines are important, but maybe it’s not apparent to everyone, and that’s why some people will have a really hard time putting out music—because it is a terrifying thing to put it out. But we’re willing to take that risk, I guess. I’m glad that it’s supposedly over in the sense that the record is coming out. We’re no longer making it. But it’s bittersweet. It’s a sadness, because it’s leaving.”

We’ve all taken time off being perceived. While life is slowly grinding back to normal means most of us will experience an odd interaction or two while relearning who we are in public, that quest becomes even trickier when it comes to understanding the art you’ve created in isolation. Given that, both members of Beach House are perhaps even more excited than normal about creating the final link in the Once Twice Melody chain by playing it live. Hopefully to as many audiences as possible.

“We’ve all been programmed in last few years for the unknown is terrifying, right?” says Legrand. “What I don’t know is scaring the crap out of me. And the future is uncertain. Now I find once again that the unknown, in this regard, is ultimately life affirming. And yes, it won’t be easy, and it’s going to be bumps in the road. But it’s going to be ultimately exciting and life giving and that not just for us, as the people who are performing and creating, but hopefully for people that haven’t been to a concert yet. The wheels are starting to roll and that’s a nice feeling.”