© 2024 Milwaukee Public Media is a service of UW-Milwaukee's College of Letters & Science
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Hear 'Sparks,' A New Song By Beach House

Beach House.
Shawn Brackill
/
Courtesy of the artist
Beach House.

There's a new album coming from Beach House, the dreamy Baltimore-based duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally. That album, called Depression Cherry, comes out on Sub Pop on Aug. 28. Today we get to hear a first song from the album, called "Sparks," and I interviewed Beach House about it.

"Sparks" has that familiar beauty we've come to expect from Beach House, but with a twist: The song begins with a vocal loop accidentally captured at the band's soundcheck in Bristol, England. Victoria and Alex were so fascinated by the sound of the loop that they held up their phones to record the loop of Victoria's voice, which now runs throughout "Sparks," setting up a tension with both the harmonies of the keyboards and the newly sung parts.

"The chaos is what excited us so much," Alex Scally told me in that interview yesterday. As the song unfolds, that tension gives way to some resolve, which is echoed in the words sung by Victoria Legrand (you can see the song's full lyrics below). "I feel that some of the words are quite direct in a certain way. I think it's addressing certain energies in our world as humans," she told me. At the end of the song, when she sings, "Make it, wave it, alive," she singing about the moment when "the grander, more abstract realm" connects with something more direct.

"It's that moment when music and words become the feeling," Victoria Legrand said. "I feel like that's sort of the ideal for us in music, for ourselves; when we feel it, we know that it's right. That moment is almost like a metaphor for what we aspire to."

You can hear that interview now or download it in the All Songs Considered podcast.

"Sparks" Lyrics:

We drive around this town
Houses melting down
A vision turning green
Is all we've ever seen

And then it's dark again

A new development
wishing that it meant
something natural
Don't we know it's cruel

And it goes dark again
Just like a spark

Hallucination comes
Think of everyone
That never shared before
From my mouth to yours

And then it's dark again

Just like a spark
And then it vanishes
No one around
And then it comes again
Just like a spark
And then we're vanishing
No one around
And then it comes again
Just like a spark

You go to school
You follow all the rules
You live inside
Realize
there's something in your eyes
You're back again
From the spine rising through the mind
You give it up
It's a gift
taken from the lips
You live again

Make it
Wave it
Alive

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

In 1988, a determined Bob Boilen started showing up on NPR's doorstep every day, looking for a way to contribute his skills in music and broadcasting to the network. His persistence paid off, and within a few weeks he was hired, on a temporary basis, to work for All Things Considered. Less than a year later, Boilen was directing the show and continued to do so for the next 18 years.