CO: I think it shows very much in the recordings too, you know? The closeness and how much you love what you’re doing. I think you guys are really a great, current band, you’re really turning into something that is going to make a lasting impression. I truly believe that. I do feel pretty special to get to listen to the album before anyone else…

VL: Yeah I didn’t even think about that! You’ve heard the record.

CO: Yes, I’ve had it for about four days and I’ve listened to it quite a bit, I’ve made notes in my book. I think it’s a home run, I’ll say that right of the bat.

AS: [laughs] I love home run. I actually like baseball too.

CO: Oh good, me too. I like the last part of the bio, the bit about ignoring the commercial and just doing what you wanted to do with this record.

AS: Writing a bio is really awful, do you write your own bios?

CO: I usually do, for this one I sort of refused because I basically would have said, “Here’s another fucking album, take it or leave it.”

AS: [laughs] Yeah, that’s what everyone wants to say. So we gave them a bio, everyone goes “No, not it”, then we wrote another one and they’re still like “No, keep going,” so we tried to like figure out what had happened to us, or what it meant or whatever and what we ended up coming up with was still bad, we’ve realised from doing these interviews that we just wrote a load of stupid stuff. But I think what we were talking about was, I mean, you probably know the feeling… like, we just tried to block everything out for two years, ignore the internet, ignore everything.

CO: It fits perfectly with the mythology that I’ve created in my mind about you guys. And I’m all for it, I think people do get way too obsessed with this sort of ego that exists online, and it’s very poisonous and treacherous, so good on you for getting that down.

VL: We definitely aren’t anti at all, it’s actually just that we are honest about the way it makes us feel, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it sucks. I think we’ve always been hyper sensitive in that way, we are protective about some things but we also aren’t curmudgeons, you know?

CO: No, of course not.

VL: There’s a balance between it all, it’s hard to find that balance in this era of technology where it’s about being part of it but without using your ‘human’ part.

CO: I’m strictly on Twitter and I try to keep it as a very sacred place, only speaking my mind here and there. Not using it as promotion for the music or anything. But then again, here and there I’ll stream a new song or something, so yeah, it’s about balance, like you said.

“We just tried to block everything out for two years, ignore the internet, ignore everything…” – Alex Scally

VL: Or équilibre, as the French say.

AS: We kind of see it as just the opposite, we try to keep it as just information about the band, which could actually come across as promotional only and kind of lifeless, I’d never really thought about it.

VL: Nothing is as intentional as being unintentional, to be natural is to just literally to shut the mouth and shut the eyes and that’s why we’re musicians and not orators.

CO: Yeah shutting the eyes, I always feel that our band isn’t playing a good show if anybody has their eyes open.

VL: Yeah, in more ways than one.

CO: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. I did want to talk about a couple of things that stood out to me on the record.

AS: Before you go on, if you’re wondering what that crinkling sound is, Victoria just opened up some Patrón.

VL: It’s a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny gallon bottle of Patrón.

CO: [laughs] Sure, sure, sure. A tiny gallon bottle. Ok so, here are my thoughts, correct me if I’m wrong. I found one of the most creative and interesting things to listen to on Depression Cherry were the beats, very creative interesting beats again. I also found that, Alex I think you’ve developed a kind of classic guitar sound over the past couple of albums that just sounds exactly like your tone. You use it in a way with a lot of distorted tones, things I’ve never really heard from you before like different types of guitar sounds, which I really enjoyed. The whole thing is just really interesting to listen to, as opposed to say, trying to go bigger than Bloom I felt that you made the choice to do something more personal and more creative, but still very focused. Victoria, there’re lots of great one-liners instead of massive choruses. Yeah, I really loved what you chose to do and I don’t know how much you thought about that or if it came naturally. Did you think, “Let’s experiment with that guitar tone?” or, “Are we not going to use drums and play more with beats?”

AS: First of all, thank you so much for those compliments, for even noticing those things. We’ve probably done about sixty interviews this week and I don’t think anyone has said anything as insightful as that about the music. Which is kind of interesting, maybe it means none of those people are musicians or something. We got really sick of drums, just naturally, because they were making it impossible to have subtle arrangements. The only thing you notice when drums are playing is like if a big bass comes in, it has to be a grand gesture when drums are involved. So not using them was wonderful, it really opened up a lot of things. I think while we were working we felt really excited about a lot of the tones we were finding, we felt like they were new directions. But most people say, “Sounds like another Beach House record.” And we say, “Okay, whatever you feel.”

CO: Well no, I’ve heard over the years that you are really dialling in a certain sound and cementing it and nailing it on Bloom. Even your previous record Teen Dream, it’s great that you didn’t stay in that safe place, it would maybe not have been as exciting for the listener anyway, and of course also for you. But you do these really great things like the acapella intro on Days of Candy and the spoken word intro on PPP, which I think are brand new things for you guys. But then you’re smart enough to bring in that classic guitar sound and the organs, so it still sounds like you but it’s fresh and very creative.

VL: I’m always thinking about how where we are now would never have happened if all the other stuff hadn’t happened and it constantly blows my mind, the amount of things that a person can do in their life, you’re always learning. You learn from your mistakes, you learn from the good things and the bad things.

CO: [laughing] For me it’s always just keep working, go to the next thing.

VL: That’s all we have, if we don’t have work we’re going to just sit around in some sort of bohemian lifestyle.

CO: I used to know a guy who was a real oddball but he used to say to me, “Art is ninety-nine percent work, and one percent spark of inspiration” and I really believe that’s true. Victoria, I know you have this amazing vocal range, from very deep to very high, but everything on this record seemed to be set more or less in one sweet spot. Even that chorus that just says, “You blow my mind” – is it just what you felt like doing at this time?

VL: Fuck yeah.

CO: Do certain songs pull a bigger chorus out of you? Did you guys select these songs for the album or did you go and write them all as an album?

VL: We just sat and wrote them all. We’ve always done that really, song by song. That’s how it is, and then about three songs in you kind of go, “Ok, I see it better now.”

“Nothing is as intentional as being unintentional, to be natural is to just literally to shut the mouth and shut the eyes and that’s why we’re musicians and not orators” – Victoria Legrand

CO: Yeah, you start to find a direction.

VL: But in terms of my singing, you used the phrase ‘sweet spot’ and maybe that’s what’s happening, maybe that’s what’s going on. I’m in my thirties, I’m a woman, I’m not a little girl, I am what I am and I know what I like and what I don’t like. Also, from my point of view I do really appreciate something about growing in life, the level of personal refinement, in terms of choruses and things like that, those songs, particularly back to like Teen Dream like Walk in the Park or something, I think that chorus was pulled up out of the music, I didn’t think “Oh, I’m going to sing those lyrics this particular way,” that particular song pulls that energy out of my voice.

AS: We got extremely bored, it’s a very natural thing, we definitely fell away from verse-chorus, we have verse-chorus songs on this record but they just feel gnarly at times.

CO: It just seemed to happen naturally? That’s great. In my mind’s eye right now I see you two as painters in a studio, it seems very organic, maybe you’d think, “Oh a jam band works like this or that,” but it’s just the two of you.

AS: Yeah that’s how we write, we jam a lot.

CO: Yeah but without the safety of the whole band there and the full sound all at once, you have to build it up piece by piece and that’s how it’s tricky. You can make a mistake and lose something or fall off.

VL: But then it would be our fault, nobody else’s.

AS: You can’t blame it on the doofus drummer.

VL: We can’t really blame it on the producer either because we don’t have that type of normal relationship, even with Chris [Coady, produced Depression Cherry]. He’s a great producer with a great mind but, I don’t know how to say what I mean…

CO: Yeah there are definitely different types of producers, like if Phil Spector works on your stuff it sounds like Phil Spector.

AS: Basically like if a song isn’t working we have nobody to blame but ourselves, it’s all on us.

CO: That’s fantastic, because at the end when you’ve done it right it’s all yours to enjoy.

AS: Is Atlanta hot as hell right now?

CO: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Very hot, I think it’s approaching about 100 degrees. I live in San Francisco, which is extremely cold all the time so I don’t do well in the hot weather.

VL: It’s so crazy that you’re in the South, we’ve done some old tours where I’ve felt that we’ve started heading south, because you can go different directions, clockwise, anticlockwise, start in the middle or whatever. So the last time we saw you was in Baltimore?

CO: Yeah, just when I was visiting, I feel like it might have been for a wedding. I’m always so excited and nervous around you guys and I know I never say the right things I just sort of smile and say [high pitched voice] “It’s so nice to see you,” I’m bad at small talk and all that, I’ve always been self-conscious.

VL: Communicating is very difficult, and I think there’s a reason why we’re all musicians, because for some reason we maybe find it easier to communicate in that way. If we were really great at communicating we’d work for a PR company or something.

CO: Yeah, I’d be like Kiefer Sutherland and have a show on TV or something.

AS: There’s plenty of you in Kiefer Sutherland [laughs].

CO: Yeah, me going around fighting terror and such.

AS: My mum watches 24, I’ve never seen it though.

CO: I’ve watched it, I’ll admit that.

AS: His punch line in that show is “Damn it,” which I think is so awesome.

VL: [shouts] Damn it!

AS: It’s such a fucking sweet punch line [laughs].

CO: Nothing tops The Wire though. How do you guys feel about The Wire, being from Baltimore? [laughs]

VL: Are you joking?

CO: I honestly don’t know, I enjoyed it a lot but I’ve never asked anybody from Baltimore how they actually feel about the show.

AS: I’ve never seen it personally, but I’ve read the book it was based on which is called The Corner and is awesome. That’s all legit shit going on in Baltimore.

CO: I felt like it was a damn good show. I would’ve done one thing differently though: I really wanted the theme song for The Wire to be that song Baltimore by Randy Newman, because it would have fit so perfectly, even lyrically and everything.

VL: [singing] Where everybody knows your name…

AS: …That’s Cheers.

VL: [laughs]

CO: So, November 14th to January 15th, it’s a good block of time. I did a similar thing with my new one, which was very different. I’d sort of fell into this, “Here’s your three weeks in the studio, go hammer it out with the band,” and I did a similar thing to you guys this time, three or four months by myself in a studio. If I’m right here, I think we maybe had the same sort of experience.

VL: Yeah, if you were really isolated and only with a few people [laughs].

AS: We ate a lot of lardy foods.

CO: Yeah, there was a good Chinese place just next door, that was useful.

VL: Maybe your album is heavily influenced by MSG, we’re more lard.

CO: Oh, now that you say MSG, I was curious about the song names PPP and 10:37, if there was any hidden meanings there?

AS: Yeah it’s just a working title that we never ever lost, and we kind of like it because it’s just so weird.

VL: I’ve always said that it’s just psychedelic nonsense. One thing I’d like to talk about at some point is the idea of PPP, clearly we aren’t like a punk band at all…

CO: [laughing] But you do have a very DIY sensibility.

VL: I definitely feel that our heart is deeply in that world, and little things like that and many other little things where you just go, “I don’t care what anybody else thinks, let’s just do that.” I definitely feel that soft punk, or whatever you want to call it, it definitely resonates with me and they were some of the first shows I ever went to in my life, actual shows, little punk shows in churches. I always thought punk was where someone wants something and they aren’t going to stop until they get it and don’t care what other people think, they’re just going to make it themselves. That’s there in my heart, for sure.

“I think that more than anything we’re taking the poetry of the whole punk thing, I’m sure that people will be like, “She’s not punk! You can’t say you’re a punk!” Why the fuck not?” – Victoria Legrand

AS: During the recording Chris Coady [producer, Depression Cherry], who is now a really close, personal friend, he started being like, “You guys are punks” and we’d be like “Shut up, Chris” and he’d be like [deep voice] “No, I’m serious, you guys are a bunch of punks.” And we actually felt proud with that comment, everyone’s always trying to box up music somehow, you know about being put in a box, right? But for some reason we feel really comfortable with that box.

VL: We’re fine with punks.

AS: I don’t think it’ll catch on, but it feels right.

CO: Yeah, I can absolutely relate to that, when I lived in a small town in Texas, before moving to San Francisco, the only scene was the punk scene and that was my first show experience and formed my live music roots. We didn’t even have venues where I was from, it was strictly a house shell thing. While I’ve gotten bored with that sound the fundamentals have always stuck with me and I’m very happy that I had that in my teenage and early adult life.

VL: Yeah, finding beauty in the ugly or unwanted or the rejected, there’s some poetry in that. I think that more than anything we’re taking the poetry of the whole punk thing, I’m sure that people will be like, “She’s not punk! You can’t say you’re a punk!” Why the fuck not?

CO: [laughs] That’s not very punk.

VL: I think there’s a lot of love in punk. For me, violence in music is always fascinating because I think there’s all different layers of it: slow violence, fast violence, romantic violence, and I think that it ties back to the title of this record – it’s a bit like, “Yeah, I don’t care, it’s called Depression Cherry and I just wanted it to exist. I don’t exactly know what it means but it definitely means something to us and maybe it’ll be a little confrontational but maybe that’s what you need, life isn’t comfortable, life is painful and weird, so Depression Cherry.” The words came out really spontaneously together but we didn’t know it was going to be the album title, it just tied into that whole thing. Like, why the fuck not?

CO: Well that definitely suits the work in the album, it suits the poignant one liners and the mysterious titles, Days of Candy, there’s a very cohesive theme which I’m sure you were just shooting from the hip but it all ties together very well with that title, for me. Looking at my notes here, they’re so corny. It’s like, “Victoria, one voice to rule them all,” and it says “Alex, amazing guitars cemented the sound after forty years of rock ‘n’ roll.”

AS: You’re so adorable.

VL: We miss you.

CO: I miss you guys too, I always wish we could spend more time together when we meet, it’s always very brief. Maybe this is the time to say it, because I’ve always had a very burning desire but I’ve never really known how to ask or whatever, but I’d really like to somehow work together on a song sometime. So just keep that in your minds and if the universe will allow it and you guys are open to it, I would have a lot of fun.

VL: Of course Christopher, of course!

AS: Now you’ve planted the seed.

Beach House will play O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London Friday 30th and Saturday 31st October. ‘Depression Cherry’ is out now on Bella Union / Mistletone / Sub Pop, and the new ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars’ is out now on Sub Pop. 

For tour and release updates head to Twitter to follow Beach House and Christopher Owens. Read our full interview with Christopher Owens from HERO 12: Darkness Falls here.