Bloom

In early 2012, I started going on semi-secret dates with my secretary. That’s how we joke about it now, but in retrospect it wasn’t that dramatic - ‘secretary’ was just her title. We ran our university writing group, and used our positions to get some quiet time together in the computer lab. Part of this was so we could focus on our editing work, part of it was for the chance to spend some time alone with one another - but we also can’t discount how nice it was to have a room with great acoustics, all to ourselves.

It was the first time in four years where I wasn’t too absorbed in work (or myself) to find time like that. Before then, I was too quiet for my own good and often replaced real conversations with music. There eventually came a time where I took the headphones out and tried a little harder to socialize. I luckily crossed paths with someone who was sweet enough to put up with me, or maybe we simply shared similar hyperfixations - we certainly had the same taste in music, at least. 

Four years of college while living with a chronic illness, three breakups, and the death of one parent were all behind me. I had reason enough to feel down and made a habit out of burying myself in work, so that I didn’t have to deal with other people. Music was just enough of a lifeline to help everything feel a little less grim. As for her, she had two more years left and two bad ones done and over with. But right in between it all, we met each other. The both of us were entirely too tired for people our age, though we tried our best to hide it. We were both the happiest people in the world, on the surface. In what little quiet time we had before meeting each other, we would write the kind of words that no one expected to hear from us. What we shared on paper was entirely different from the voices most people knew us for. I didn’t think I’d find someone like that so late in my college experience, let alone someone who liked all the same music as me. 

We quickly learned how much we had in common. We would swap flash drives filled with albums and talk until our conversations destroyed any focus on work. Whatever masks we wore on the page or for others came off. But on the days where she had class, I’d still revert to my old habits; I’d plug in whatever album she’d given me and try my best to fill that vaulted lab with something other than silence. It was a familiar indulgence, but by May 2012, everything was different. I wasn’t just pushing the quietness away, I was actively listening to what she brought me. I felt oddly awake. I was not only about to graduate, but for the first time in four years, I knew I was happy, and stupidly head-over-heels - and you could not find a more beautiful, cliche genre to fall in love to than dream pop. 

Beach House… or was it Beach Fossils? King of the Beach? We were still in the era of poorly labeled sound files, you can’t blame me for mixing them all up at first. There were many sandy bands around that time, most of which are fine in their own regard and live on as great little slices of the early ‘10s. But of all the albums dug out of whatever murky, digital sea trench I trawled, there was only one that fit that moment just right. That seems to be a common experience among Beach House fans, especially with the explosion in popularity of Space Song off of 2015’s Depression Cherry. Their songs excel as the perfectly-fitting emotional backdrop, whether for the privacy of your college campus in wintertime, or to share with the world via viral TikTok videos. That’s not to boil their work down to mood music, or imply anything about it isn’t thoughtfully crafted. In fact, it’s the hard work that goes into an album like Bloom that makes it fit so effortlessly into so many moments. 

If there is one word I decidedly avoid using to describe this album, it’s ‘ethereal’. It’s a go-to word for dream pop music, but not entirely fair to Bloom. This is a weirdly-specific quibble on my part, but given the impressionistic nature of the word, I always thought it undersold the impact this album can make on a listener. The lyrics, the music itself, and the emotional weight carried by both culminate into something more than a mere impression. The staying power of both Bloom and its creators are proof that there’s reason for connection, reasons to listen - but also, you don’t really need an excuse at all to enjoy it. It’s as simple as its name; Bloom, the opening of something full of life. The album is not some dandelion, broken and gone with the breeze, but an experience rooted in the band’s own artistic efforts, and an accomplishment that validates and enriches their listeners' emotions.

These are not simple, fleeting feelings, even if you’re just enjoying the music and moving on. Songs like this have the ability to become inextricably connected to a time and place, and while I’m clearly biased given the happiness I felt while listening to Bloom, Victoria and Alex deserve more credit for how they helped that happen. Maybe it’s magic, but it’s also very much their own personal talent; maybe it’s something like sonic empathy. They know what they’re making, and it’s more than some here-and-gone ‘momentary bliss’. The album opens with a discussion on mythologizing romance, or romanticizing the past. It’s exactly what I’d done for four years, before opening myself up to something real, and something nice, after so many wasted days. I’d been poorly writing the stories I thought others might want to read, without embracing the chance of meeting other people and really making my own memories. 

Bloom was well received by critics and fans alike. However, one key criticism was the album’s sense of over-familiarity when compared to Beach House’s earlier work. It’s not uncommon to see their sound described as ‘recognizable’ - that’s a carefully chosen word, simultaneously complementary yet *just* backhanded enough, if you want it to be. Some listeners wanted a push in a new direction, and while there’s nothing wrong with having reasonable expectations of an artist you love, there’s no problem with bands pacing themselves and mastering their sound. Whenever I asked what somebody meant by wanting the band to ‘change’, I never got a straight answer. Everyone I spoke to loved it, and in due internet fashion, a lot of people were just looking for anything to criticize. With time - and few more LPs following its release - Bloom proved itself as something of an era perfected. What some saw as too familiar, I saw as the culmination of the band’s most loveable elements, and while it is an undeniably dream pop album, Bloom isn’t the tame pastiche of genre tropes some critics paint it as. The lyrical themes are grounded, and sometimes dark as in the case with “Wild”. The tendency to dismiss these songs as wispy or light just because of the sound itself greatly runs the risk of associating the overall content with a certain hollowness. Everything here is anything but.

Of course, on a purely literal, musical level, the album has subtle sounds, airy scapes, and even a sense of otherworldliness. We can talk all we want about the ‘ephemeral’ nature of dream pop - that’s where it gets its name, after all. But I can listen to the opening shimmer and shake of Myth, and I’m not in some moody blur or vague dreamscape. I’m back at the first place I’d ever heard it. Listening to Bloom for the first time was less like entering a dream, and much more like waking up after a very long, restless night. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was working into my memories the sounds that would remind me of one of the happiest times of my life. I wasn’t just living some myth, I was living. I want to blame the raw emotion you find after crawling out of a depressive slump, but the music really did the heavy lifting. It was inspiring, it helped me through my work, and for me, it wasn’t just the backdrop to some substanceless psychedelia. It was a very real part of what helped me strive toward a better version of myself. And that is entirely because it helped me process my old feelings and approach the new. It was exactly what I needed to hear, how I wished I’d spent my time. It inspired me to think of others for a change, and I give it credit for waking me up in time to meet her. 

I could turn it on then, and I can turn it on now, and it makes me think of the girl I met back then - my now fiancee. She was my reason to wake up, but Bloom might as well have been the alarm clock. There were lyrics in the mix that perfectly spoke for feelings I wasn’t able to put to page myself. I could finally take out my headphones, look up from the screen, and share the music that made me happy with someone else for a change. I gave up writing dour, negative things, and focused on what I needed; something better than a myth, and the start of a real story, with real characters - not just what’s dead and gone, but something meant to flourish forever.