Dreamy Sunday Afternoons + Beach House

Joshua B. Hoe

This is a short post about “feeling” music...nothing too deep...

Usually, I prefer music with something desperate at its core...Music with an intense need to share something..Music that feels like its authors either have a rhythm inside them that they cannot hold inside anymore or a frustration, anger, or cynical comment that they just have to let out...Most of the music I love feels like it had to happen...Kind of like the alternative to making the music would be like something out of the first “Alien” movie.

This is one of the many reasons I have never embraced free-form jamming or psychedelic experimentation (through music).

There have been a few exceptions...Usually, when I move away from driving music it has to be for music that transports me...music that feels like a specific experience of place. Where the lyrics are not as important, at all, as the feelings the music invokes in me.

For instance, I love The War on Drugs album "Lost in the Dream," because it makes me feel like I am driving a long highway with the windows down during the summer.

I love the Tones on Tail song “Rain” because it transports me to that place where you are between just being (falling) asleep and dreaming..Like everything is where it is supposed to be but it just kind of...just a little bit isn’t...Like logic and structure still exists...but, it is being affected by the pull of the dream-state (dreams not nightmares, for me it is not a scary feeling at all).

I love the entire double album "Filigree and Shadow" by This Mortal Coil because it kind of sounds like how I wish I could experience Classical Music...It makes me feel like I want to feel when listening to a Classical Concert or maybe an Opera...It is like Classical Music that speaks to me through my musical language. This is not to say that I never appreciate Classical, it is more to say that I appreciate This Mortal Coil as I might appreciate a translator if I was trying to converse with someone who spoke a different language.

I love much of the late 80’s and early 90’s (arguably overproduced) stuff by The Cure...Songs like Pictures of You (discussed before) and a Letter to Elise just feel like romance. Like that moment when you know you like someone and you know that they like you...but, neither party has actually admitted it yet. There is a specific excitement feeling that is peculiar only to that period of pre-relationship time, in my humble opinion.

I have to admit, despite years of being ambivalent about them,I love the new Album by Beach House "Depression Cherry"...It makes me feel like when I have just finished swimming in really cold water and sit down on a deck chair and the sun feels that amazing warm on my skin in contrast to the memory of the cold water. It feels comforting and dreamy...almost floating away on a cloud would feel.

I find that some music is about what it is saying, and I might, upon more reflection, find that the lyrics are actually very deep...But, for the last several days, I have just been awash in the feelings the album provokes...So, far, at least for me, I have felt nothing depressing from the album at all...Only calm comfort...and warm nostalgia and peace.

I guess that is a strong endorsement? At least, I hope it is. I really have enjoyed the album...And, I have not always “gotten” them.

Yes, having this discussion probably removes me from consideration for any kind of tough guy music award :)

I also was thinking, Beach House is starting to kind of remind me a little, in style, of Cocteau Twins...

I mean sure, Victoria Legrand does not have the same vocal talent as Elizabeth Fraser..but, they have a similar dreamy quality and ethereal musical style.

Want to hear more War On Drugs? Listen here:

What do you think of Depression Cherry? What are songs that remind you of feelings and/or places? I would love to hear your comments (even if you are making fun of me for liking Beach House)...