(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)
Artist: Beach House
Album Title: Teen dream
Year released: 2010
Year reissued: 2020
Details: Gatefold sleeve, clear vinyl, Love Record Stores 2020 release
The skinny: A few weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down in March 2020, a campaign called ‘Love Record Stores’ was started in support of brick and mortar independent music vendors in England and a number of musical artists, big and small, threw their weight behind it. Many record stores, not just in England but worldwide, had to rethink how they did business and shifted from analog and tactile sales towards the online marketplace. It didn’t happen quickly enough to rescue the Record Store Day festivities in April but Love Record Stores managed something in June, which saw a bunch of artists offer a lot of great albums for special edition pressings in support of the cause. I found and purchased once such record, this clear vinyl reissue of Beach House’s third album, “Teen dream”, a couple of years after the original event. This no-brainer purchase came courtesy of one such indie record store in England that actually has a great online presence and from whom I order quite often. The album had been on my wish list for a while, being one of my favourites by the Baltimore-based dream pop duo. “Teen dream” took the well-practiced elements from their first two outings and amplified them into a collection of memorable numbers. Victoria Legrand’s vocals feels more pronounced, more melodic, and pushed to the fore, breathing new life and energy into their sound. It’s an album that, from the start, I was able to delve into deeply, soak my whole body into its warm flowing eddies and let it stream through my fingers.
Standout track: “Used to be”
My (life in) music lists 