Review: Beach House Sent Denver on a Cosmic Journey

As if entering the beginning of a dream somewhere in a ballroom, the audience could just make out the silhouettes of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally through fog and back lights as they appropriately opened their Denver show with "Levitation."

Beach House graced the Mile High City at Mission Ballroom on Wednesday, May 14, in a tour that will only hit a handful of U.S. cities before making its way to European destinations like Brussels, Paris and Barcelona. It has been one of my favorite bands for a while, but this is the first time that I got to see the group perform live. You could say I'm thanking my lucky stars.

Beach House, which Legrand (vocals and synthesizer) and Scally (backing vocals, guitar and keys) formed in Baltimore in 2004, has been labeled with such genres as indie, dream pop and shoegaze, but the duo's otherworldly arrangements of synth, electric guitar and vocals transcend labels. The band stuck with the atmospheric, dreamlike darkness through the entire show, sending the sold-out audience into orbit with hits like "Black Car," "Drunk in LA" and "Master of None." Beforehand, opening artist Cass McCombs set the introverted and mysterious tone for the night with his fingerpicking psychedelic folk set, addressing the audience only once at the end of his performance to thank Beach House.

I made it to the barricade, thanks to my friend Aria Sablan, a die-hard Beach House fan who arrived to wait in line outside Mission Ballroom at 10:30 a.m., braving a thunderstorm and freezing temperatures for hours. At the show, the audience comprised people of all ages and backgrounds; we stood between a Canadian and an Australian guy. It was evident just how many people love Beach House and seem to have a personal connection with the music. "Silver Soul" and "Gila" became two of my favorite cry-anthems when I first moved to Denver. Two thousand miles away from anyone I knew and experiencing my first real winter, I'd pace my apartment with the two songs on repeat in my headphones. They somehow captured the range of despair, isolation and joy I felt at the time.
"You are an astronaut," Legrand said at one point during the show. "We're all astronauts. We can stay on planet Earth and be astronauts." Physically, we did stay on planet Earth. But spiritually, the concert was a vehicle for cosmic ascension, with Legrand and Scally as our guides.

Although the musicians seemed to be merely shadows in the dark, their music exuded energy and passion, their voices blending into one being that gave a polished and seamless performance. The songs sounded so close to the original recordings, save for Legrand's beautiful vocal embellishments.
The band, which also included James Barone on drums, played a good range of its nearly two-decade span of music, giving the audience a three-song encore that included "Saltwater" (the first song Beach House ever wrote), "Space Song" ("Okay, TikTokers," Aria said.) and "Over and Over."

The spacey projections and ethereal layers of the music made the show feel like a dream from start to finish. It was one I was sorry to wake up from.

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