Beach House – Once Twice Melody - 2XLP

Once Twice Melody is the 8th studio album by Beach House. It is a double album, featuring 18 songs presented in 4 chapters. Across these songs, many types of style and song structures can be heard. Songs without drums, songs centered around acoustic guitar, mostly electronic songs with no guitar, wandering and repetitive melodies, songs built around the string sections. In addition to new sounds, many of the drum machines, organs, keyboards and tones that listeners may associate with previous Beach House records remain present throughout many of the compositions.

Beach House is Victoria Legrand, lead singer and multi-instrumentalist, and Alex Scally, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. They write all of their songs together. Once Twice Melody is the first album produced entirely by the band. The live drums are by James Barone (same as their 2018 album, 7), and were recorded at Pachyderm studio in Minnesota and United Studio in Los Angeles. For the first time, a live string ensemble was used. Strings were arranged by David Campbell.

The writing and recording of Once Twice Melody began in 2018 and was completed in July of 2021. Most of the songs were created during this time, though a few date back over the previous 10 years. Most of the recording was done at Apple Orchard Studio in Baltimore. Once Twice Melody was mixed largely by Alan Moulder but a few tracks were also mixed by Caesar Edmunds, Trevor Spencer, and Dave Fridmann.

Chapter 1 / Pink Funeral    
A1        Once Twice Melody
A2        Superstar
A3        Pink Funeral
A4        Through Me
Chapter 2 / New Romance    
B1        Runaway
B2        ESP
B3        New Romance
B4        Over And Over
Chapter 3 / Masquerade    
C1        Sunset
C2        Only You Know
C3        Another Go Around
C4        Masquerade
C5        Illusion Of Forever
Chapter 4 / Modern Love Stories    
D1        Finale
D2        The Bells
D3        Hurts To Love
D4        Many Nights
D5        Modern Love Stories