Review: It’s Overcast Season at Beach House

For more than a decade, the Baltimore duo Beach House has been crafting lush, introspective songs that revel in navel-gazing misery. It’s a form of indie-rock mood lighting meant to be inhabited as much as listened to. For its fifth album, Depression Cherry, the pair decided to de-emphasize percussion, and the pillowy, haunting result is ideal for the encroaching autumn days. Amid its somber tones, Depression Cherry does present a glimmer of light: Victoria Legrand’s velvety murmurings about disaffectedness and longing combine with Alex Scally’s cumulus-cloud guitars to create a space of sanctuary, one where despair and anxiety–“Yet I’m tracing figure eights on ice in skates/Oh well, if this ice should break, it would be my mistake,” Legrand sings on the chiming “PPP”–are not only understood but reconfigured into a shot at shared bliss.