Thank Your Lucky Stars
by Beach House

From Repo TOP 100 COMMENTER 03/16/2017 08:35 | #187513 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I'm a total sucker for this type of music. Hazy, laconic, drugged out. The perfect stuff for a codeine cough syrup bender. To me, it's the ultimate romantic music in the world. Of course, I also think Charlotte Sometimes is the most romantic song in the entire world. While my kids ( & probably most well adjusted people) think this music sounds depressing, I find it the happiest most uplifting stuff in the entire world and almost nothing puts me in a better mood.

As far as I can tell, this is as good as any Beach House record released. And I've been a fan of theirs since Devotion. I definitely like it better than Depression Cherry. A lot of it has to do with the guitars which are sometimes set to stun as well as the more stripped down production. Plus, there's not a single clunker among the batch.

Unlike some people, I actually love it when a band finds something they are really, really good at and than just subtly tinker with that formula for the rest of their career.

Grade: A. Totally addicting dream pop which I would put up against any of their other releases. (Edited)

From cestuneblague TOP 100 COMMENTER 12/31/2015 10:09 | #155420 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

There's something almost fishy about how quickly this was released after DC- it almost feels like they just re-recorded the lesser Devotion and Teen Dream b-sides. It's a better album than the weightless Depression Cherry, Ill give it that, and it's nice to see a renewed attention to songcraft, but there's nothing here that really stands out... it all just kind of glides around pleasently and aimlessly with it's feet barely above ground. It works fine enough as pleasent background music, but it's attempt to regain that special spark that marked the more engaging lo-fi style of Devotion and the sort of (how do I put it) intimate grandeur of their masterpiece Teen Dream, just doesn't really work. Not a bad album by any means, but let's hope this is not the best they can do going forward.

From PsychologistHD 10/12/2015 23:03 | #151366 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

5.3

Well, we didn't get the "Sparks" sound.

This is the weakest we've EVER seen Beach House, failing even to meet the low expectations of Depression Cherry, TYLS plays more like a mediocre slowcore album than something by seasoned Dream Pop vets. The best song is, far and away, "All Your Yeahs", which is oddly enough, the biggest departure from Beach House's sound up to this point.

This one was a nice listen, but overall a mixed bag.

I'll start with the good: Elegy to the Void, Somewhere Tonight, and Majorette are three of the finest tracks Beach House has ever released. If the rest of the record had been even close to the quality of these few, it would have been one of their best.

However, despite having a few other solid tracks like Rough Song, there is a whole heap of material on this record that just feels lethargic and underdeveloped. "All Your Yeahs" may be a departure into Faith-era-Cure inspired minimalism, but it just feels bare. It doesn't suit them at all, in my opinion. "She's So Lovely" has some gorgeous layered ideas, but it just drags along so lifelessly that I can't help but be simply bored with it.

Overall, the highs are high and the lows are low, to the extent that this record is all right, but definitely had the potential to be fantastic.

Favorite Tracks: Elegy to the Void, Somewhere Tonight, Majorette

Least Favorite: Common Girl

Just one listen through and am I wayyyy more intrigued than I was with Depression Cherry immediately (honestly the only songs I loved off that album were "Levitatation" and "Sparks". Same old Beach House vibe but a little more stripped down and gorgeous, unlike Depression Cherry which is a little too similar to Myth in the sense that some of the songs really drag on with some unnecessary filler. Also something about this album that is different than DC and Bloom are the rhythms - the drums, drum machines, and rhythms overall in this album are more diverse and compelling (not that DC and Bloom had bad rhythms, but they were a little repetitive throughout the albums' tracklists). "Majorette" is a lovely song, by the way.