Legrand Scheme Of Things.

Pitchfork.com Special Presentation: Beach House

I find this puzzling for two reasons:

1. I have a very hard time believing Beach House has their practice space inside a furry igloo, because frankly, sticking two men inside what appears to be the interior of a very clean Ugg boot would more likely yield an angry rap verse or furious metal music than dream-pop.

2. This sounds really good. Really, really good. Too good, even. It's not the same audio as on the album, but...something's up here. I mean, have you ever heard a live performance sound like this? A co-worker of mine thinks they recorded in the studio and then just shot the band performing to the playback, which actually seems to make sense.

And, well, maybe all of this sixth-season Lost stuff has gotten to my head, but take a look at 3:12 during "Take Care" - Victoria's fingers don't appear to be matching up with what's playing, but a bit afterwards, everything's in sync. Recording it live and dubbing it back over couldn't account for that, since everything would have to either sync or not sync. There would have to be another explanation...

Crap. I gotta stay away from all those those forums.

In With The New, Out With The Old

I feel like I get a little older every time I listen to NPR. Like a grey hair shoots up out of my head or a tiny wrinkle appears around my eyes, because NPR is for people who count "gardening" among their hobbies, for grandparents in their Cadillac, for people who reference Jimmy Carter once a day, and those who pronounce it n-p-rrrrrrrrr.

But lately, i don't give a fuck if my pockets are full of used Kleenex and Werther's Originals. They've been having such unbelievable first listen album streams on their site that i don't mind if visiting it twice a day turns me into a California Raisin. (Though, considering i'm an indoors kid to the core and never go outside in the sunshine, this would be highly unfortunate.) So, bring on the six memories of my youth that i'll never stop repeating as stories to everyone I know - as long as National Public Radio keeps bringing me the pre-release tunes they've been offering as of late, I'll be good to go.

Listen to Midlake, Beach House, Charlotte Gainsbourg and more at NPR right now. (Try to avoid getting cataracts on the way.)