I didn't quite know what to make of Beach House's
Devotion. The album was on the first tier of many critic's lists for 2008. I listened to it a couple of times and I wondered what all of the fuss was about.
Then roughly a month ago I gave the album a third listen. I finally was in the right frame of mind to appreciate the elusive beauty of the music .
Devotion explores some of the same musical territory as Serge Gainsborough, Britta and Dean Wareham, Mazzy Star, Jessica Lea Mayfield and some of the later work of Luna.
I have a tendency to get impatient with downtempo music because it often demands a reflective state of mind to appreciate it. My impulse is to get annoyed with music without a strong backbeat because my brain has been conditioned by my music listening habits.
Much of the music that gets tagged and marketed as "downtempo" is dreadfully unimaginative. Listening a full album of dreary downtempo music is as boring as watching paint dry on a wall.
My procedure is to give an album two listenings even if I don't like it, then put the album aside for few months and allow the music to aborb into my thick skull. When I revisit the album for a third listening with a fresh set of ears, I'll decide if the album is a keeper or it gets deleted from my hard drive. I rarely have regrets about deleting an album that doesn't sink in after three complete plays.
My computer disk space is too precious a commodity to have it cluttered with music I'll never listen to.
Beach House : Devotion
Linear Mode
