Beach House: 7 [SUB POP]

Why you'll love it

This LP comes in a gatefold jacket with a download card. Critics greeted 7 with wide acclaim, and several called it the duo's best album yet.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Download card included

About the album

After clearing out the closet with 2017's B-Sides and Rarities, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally decided to change how they worked. They moved on from longtime producer Chris Coady and brought in Sonic Boom, Peter Kember of Spacemen 3, who joined them without being a producer in the traditional sense. After years of quick sessions, the aim was a slower, freer way of making a record.

Recording stretched over eleven months, starting in their Baltimore home studio and finishing at Carriage House and Palmetto Studio. "Dark Spring" bursts in on rushing drums, "Lemon Glow" throbs like a lava lamp, "Dive" builds from a slow sway into a full gallop, and "Black Car" glides on cold synths. "Lose Your Smile" and "L'Inconnue" show the gentler side, and "Last Ride" closes on a long, glowing fade.

Its four advance singles, "Lemon Glow," "Dive," "Dark Spring" and "Black Car," trickled out from February to May 2018. "Lose Your Smile" later got its own physical single, and the band made a full visualizer to go with the album. Seven albums in, they simply called it 7, a naming system we've quietly borrowed for the shop's coffee mugs.

Also at Kops: more Beach House on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Sub Pop (cat# SP1240), the 2018 album.