Out In The Endless Green

Beach House “Wild”

It is amazing to me that this song is as gorgeous and graceful as it is despite its rhythm coming mainly from a very flimsy preset pattern. Though it’s consistent through the piece, it’s mostly obscured behind very elegant and deliberate sounds – a very precise and evocative guitar tone, a lovely keyboard drone, Victoria Legrand’s soothing voice. The arrangement is like thick incense haze, when the drum machine is foreground it’s as if the smoke clouds have cleared for a moment. This trick works on a thematic level too: Legrand is singing about a teen taking risks and being “wild” as an escape from the more grim aspects of their family life, but when the sound shifts, it’s like snapping out of the dreamy fantasy and remembering that you’re just some nervous inexperienced kid at heart.

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