Local dream-pop duo Beach House is the first artist in residence with Towson-based alternative music station WTMD, the station announced today.
So what does that mean exactly? It means vocalist/keyboardist Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally will offer a series of radio specials in the lead-up to the duo’s June 11 homecoming show at the Hippodrome Theatre.
Still on the road in support of the excellent album “7,” Baltimore duo Beach House is returning home this summer for a local show at one of the city’s grandest venues, the Hippodrome Theatre.
Local duo Beach House released another track, “Dark Spring,” off the forthcoming release “7,” and it’s yet another example of the band pushing its sound.
After dropping the delightful “Lemon Glow” and a cryptic message about a forthcoming album last month, local dream-pop duo Beach House returned this morning with a new song, “Dive,” and a name and release date for their seventh album, the appropriately titled “7.”
As a Valentine’s Day gift to Baltimore and the rest of the world, local dream-pop duo Beach House released the new track “Lemon Glow” last night. The synths and distorted guitar notes give the band’s signature a trippy edge and slight sense of foreboding, both welcome additions to Beach House’s melange of drum machine beats, Alex Scally’s swirling guitars, and Victoria Legrand’s keys and supple vocals.
The only bad part about Baltimore bands blowing up is that they don’t actually play Baltimore very often anymore. For a trio of Baltimore-based indie acts, however, visiting home has its perks. Now, they can get a show at Pier Six.
Here’s one more way to Beach House on the brain as summer starts. For the first time in three years, Beach House — the band — are set to release a new album. The swooning starlets of Baltimore’s music scene will release Depression Cherry on August 28, via Sub Pop Records.
In recent years, playwright and director Lola Pierson has become a fixture of Baltimore’s theater scene. Her group Un Saddest Factory organized four years of the celebrated and always sold-out Ten Minute Play Festival. And now her new independent theater company Acme Corporation is putting on her latest play — “Office Ladies” — which scored a very optimistic preview in the Sun and a glowing review in the City Paper.
The play, like much of Pierson’s previous work, includes “a lot of meta-theater stuff in it and a lot of nonlinear narrative,” as well as “a lot of people not really talking to each other.” And if that doesn’t sound like the makings of a charming, engaging theater experience, then you’ve probably never seen a Lola Pierson play before. Turning cerebral and formally adventurous character studies into well-paced comedies is a special skill of hers.
The problem with success is that it attracts the attention of sneaks, cheats, and people bent on exploitation. It may be an old story, but this particular spin on it is one we haven’t heard before: the good guys are hometown heroes Beach House, and the baddies are Volkswagen. Yes, the car company.
A year or so ago, Volkswagen (via its ad agency DDB) started hassling Beach House about using the 2010 song “Take Care” in an ad. The duo declined the (generous) financial offer. DDB kept coming back and offering more money — and the band kept declining. Simple enough, right? Except that DDB apparently couldn’t take no for an answer. Instead, they hired a bunch of Beach House sound-alikes to make a close approximation of the song for the ad spot. The real song features Victoria LeGrand’s dreamy, soaring vocals promising “I’d take care of you”; the knock-off song in the ad has a suspiciously similar-sounding woman crooning “I’ll watch over you.” The songs are so close in sound that Beach House fans were tweeting about hearing the dream pop duo in the ad — which is apparently just what Volkswagon wanted. (Watch the ad and hear the original song below the jump.)
