B-Sides and Rarities
This compilation contains every song Beach
House – aka Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand – has made that does not exist on
one of their albums. The band explains:
When we announced that we were releasing a B-sides
and rarities album, someone on Twitter asked, “B-sides record? Why would Beach
House put out a B-sides record? Their A-sides are like B-sides.” This random
person has a point. Our goal has never been to make music that is explicitly
commercial. Over the years, as we have worked on our 6 LPs, it wasn’t the
“best” or most catchy songs that made the records, just the ones that fit
together to make a cohesive work. Accordingly, our B-sides are not songs that
we didn’t like as much, just ones that didn’t have a place on the records we
were making.
The oldest song is “Rain in Numbers” and was
recorded in 2005, during the summer when we formed the band. We
didn’t have a piano, so we asked our friend if we could use his, which was
pretty out of tune. We used the mic that was on the four-track machine to
record the piano and vocals. It was originally the secret song on our
self-titled debut.
The next couple of songs are from late 2008.
We were so excited about “Used to Be” that we quickly recorded it and put it on
a 7” for our fall tour with the Baltimore Round Robin. The same session
begat our cover of Queen’s “Play the Game” for a charity compilation benefiting
AIDS research; we will continue to donate all profits from the song to that
charity. As fans of Queen, we thought it would be fun and ridiculous to try to
adapt their high-powered pop song into our realm. These songs were recorded at
the same studio where we made Devotion.
There are a bunch of songs written and
recorded in the 2009-2010 window. “Baby” was written and recorded in October
2009 with our friend Jason Quever. “10 Mile Stereo” was recorded during
the Teen Dream session in July 2009. Since
we used tape, we often slowed the tape way down to create
effects while recording, which led to “10 Mile Stereo (Cough Syrup Remix).”
“White Moon” and “The Arrangement” were both
songs that we didn’t believe fit on Teen
Dream. “White
Moon” originally appeared on our iTunes live session. Since that was recorded
and mixed very hastily, we have remixed it to better match our current
aesthetics. We have also remixed and included the version of “Norway” we
did at that same session. We wrote and recorded “I Do Not Care for the Winter
Sun” during a break between tours and released it on the internet for free,
unmastered. Well, it’s finally been mastered…
“Wherever You Go” is another song from that
era. We always loved this song but thought it sounded too much like
our old music. We didn’t finish it until 2011 during the Bloom recording session. It
appeared originally as a secret song on Bloom. “Equal
Mind” was also recorded during the Bloom session,
but we left it off the record after realizing it had the exact same tempo as
“Other People.” “Saturn Song” is built on a piano
loop we wrote while recording Bloom,
and contains sounds recorded in deep space. It originally appeared on a
compilation of songs incorporating space sounds that was released in 2014.
Finally, there are two previously unreleased
songs from the Depression
Cherry/Thank Your Lucky Stars sessions. They are called
“Chariot” and “Baseball Diamond.”
