I came across Beach House's Bloom while sifting through the CD rack at my local Goodwill on the corner of 16th and Indian School in Phoenix, AZ. A pleasant textural surprise, the raised cover art of a seemingly endless array of white dots vanishing into inky darkness caught my attention and drew me in. I knew not of any of their prior releases, but loved the cover, and followed my gut. It was doubled-packed with a homemade Ritmo Latino Vol. 6 CD, complete with a torn Avery label face sticker, which was a bonus.
I went jogging that night and couldn't believe my good fortune of plucking such a sublime, rich nocturnal drift of an album from the void. Bloom is a gorgeous record, soaked in reverberated guitar, fragile Casio keyboard drum loops and haunting vocal arrangements that hang perpetually suspended in smoky atmosphere.
"Myth," the album's opener and first single, is a Cocteau Twins-inspired sonic lullaby that is equal parts mourning the decay of what's "dead and gone," and embracing change of what's yet to come, as you find yourself "...in a new direction, eons far from the sun." Even though you're hurtling through pitch black darkness, of which there is much to go around on when listening to Bloom, there is a luminescence to the milky light that shimmers off of songwriters Victoria Legrand & Alex Scally's work that keeps you inspired to move forward.