The Cult and Beach House Reviews from Paste Magazine

By Jeff Leven, Paste Magazine

The Cult revisit their primal selves.

In their commercial heyday The Cult were that improbable band that bridged the gap between The Cure and Guns N’ Roses (who eventually nicked their drummer), floating in a psychedelic suspension spiritually derived from The Doors (who Cult singer Ian Astbury eventually fronted…sort of) and otherwise inhabited by only occasional others like Jane’s Addiction. When Metallica hired Bob Rock to produce The Black Album, it was allegedly to chase the tones and polish he achieved with The Cult on Sonic Temple. The lazy man’s storyline on Choice of Weapon is Rock’s return and the fact that facially Choice of Weapon, like Sonic Temple, fuses the arena-ready rock of Electric with the mercurial tones of Love, resulting in… a Cult record that sounds like a Cult record.

What’s most compelling about this record, though, is that it has a more turbulent soul than a 2012 record from a band that has been around for this long really ought to, probably due at least in part to time spent in the desert with the album’s other producer Chris Goss (Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss). From the drug-pop of “Honey From a Knife” to the vision-dreams of “Elemental Light,” Astbury remains an oddball, shamanistic cat, while Billy Duffy buttresses his singer’s weirder flights of fancy with workmanlike guitar dazzle. Even what sounds like a dead-on reworking of earlier hits like “The Wolf” comes off as unapologetically natural. As always the music imagines that Cult space where the arena, the peyote sweat lodge, the abandoned cathedral and the Berlin leather club all become one, and you get the sense that here and only here are they truly in their element. Offering catchy music with a twisted core, The Cult continue to thrive by sticking to their basic muse, and they are showing pretty much no signs of rust.

By Michell Eloy, Paste Magazine

Coming off their much-lauded Teen Dream, indie-pop duo Beach House return from two years of touring with their highly anticipated fourth full-length album, Bloom. It’s another solid output from the Baltimore duo, one that’s distinctively Beach House, and it serves as a further development of the sound listeners have to come to expect over the last six years.

Bloom picks up where Teen Dream left off, forgoing the more ambient sounds of the band’s first and second albums for more structured, hook-based songs. And much like its predecessor, Bloom’s sound is superficially light and whimsical, almost delicate—not unlike an actual blooming flower. Alex Scally masterfully crafts entrancing, methodical guitar arrangements that pair perfectly with Victoria Legrand’s gauzy voice to form a dreamy, almost ethereal-sounding pop album that’s as sweeping as it is audibly beautiful.

Only upon further listens does the album reveal itself to be full of painful imagery of unrequited love and letting go of something to which you still feel attached. The opening track, “Myth,” evokes a dream-like state with its simple, repetitive keystrokes and synth overlay. That image stands in contrast to Legrand’s lyrics as she croons above, “what comes after this momentary bliss/ the consequence of what you do to me” before forcefully imploring in the chorus, “help me to name it.”

The rest of the album proceeds like a lover who’s coping with the remains of a crumbled relationship. On “Lazuli,” Legrand trills, “make us suffer/like no other,” then laments, “nothing like lapis lazuli,” a reference to the rare, semi-precious stone. It’s as if Legrand takes on the role of someone convincing herself that love is nothing rare and is easily replaceable before the song crescendos in dramatic fashion to cries of “like no other, you can’t be replaced.” In “New Year,” Legrand sings, “can you call it/see it coming/just enough to tell the story about a portrait of a young girl/ waiting for a new year,” later in the song adding, almost like an aside, “you were getting wiser/it’s better this way.” It’s a painful image of someone coming to terms with loss that, upon reflection, seems all but inevitable.

That’s always been Beach House’s formula: juxtaposing themes of heartbreak, loss and longing with hypnotic rhythms that build upon each other and careen hazily to a sparkling chorus. But the band does it with more force this time around. Bloom sounds bigger than Beach House’s previous albums. Though the elements remain the same—steady percussion; repetitive, almost hypnotic guitar; reverberated piano; sparkling synthesizers—they’re layered and arranged in a way that amplifies the band’s distinct sound. It’s a more refined and produced sound than that from earlier albums, but one that’s not unwelcome.

In the end, Bloom isn’t a huge progression for Beach House, but rather a lateral step for the group. It’s an album that’s sure to satisfy long-time fans while undoubtedly garnering the band even more media buzz.