Beach House have always been more about mood and feeling than sharp melodies, a fusion of Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine slow-diving under a valium haze. Thank Your Lucky Stars is certainly well in tune with the rest of their catalog. That said, it’s more haunted and spectral, as if Depression Cherry is afternoon fading into dusk and Thank Your Lucky Stars is much later the same weary night. The songs on Depression Cherry are more mannered and precise, not quite as raw. But any stylistic differences are ephemeral which, of course, is not at all a bad thing. Beach House once again has us drifting slowly in musical space. Reverbed guitars, lushly layered keyboards, Victoria Legrand’s voice rising from the murk like a wounded spirit… Thank Your Lucky Stars is hypnotic head trip music of the highest caliber.
Thank Your Lucky Stars isn’t a companion to Depression Cherry; it’s the moody younger sibling who lives in the basement writing poetry. Still, they operate in the same sonic territory, and are nearly the same length. It’s the continuation of a wonderful thread that begins with Beach House’s debut album nearly a decade ago. Yeah, it’s easy to pick out a dozen or more bands that you can hear in bits and pieces throughout the album, but Beach House weave their influences so well that it seems churlish to dismiss them as unoriginal. Thank Your Lucky Stars is melancholy beauty. It’s music for late nights, for falling adrift in slow dark waters and gazing numbly at the glowing moonlight.
