As the harsh hoodrat setting of HBO’s “The Wire,” Baltimore has been getting much exposure lately ““ its gritty, gray streets setting the scene for drug dealing and hardened violence. So it would seem strange that the Maryland city is also home to the dreamiest of dreamy indie bands, Beach House, who plays tonight at Spaceland in Silver Lake.
Beach House’s music is rich and deeply intimate, created by only two members, vocalist/keyboardist/organist Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally. Formed three years ago in Baltimore, Legrand said that the band has a distinct sound ““ misty organ tones, subtle percussion, pure chiming guitar, and lofty, bluesy vocals “”mdash; that was mutually decided upon from the beginning.
“A lot of it was instinct,” Legrand said. “We both had an affinity for lo-fi stuff and had certain fascinations with older styles of production where things sound really lush and kind of powdery and reverberant.”
Having only two band members helped keep the songwriting process undiluted and simple, which might account for the music’s intricate, enveloping smoothness.
“It was easy and just flowed really well and really quickly,” Legrand said. “We definitely tried to keep our base interests in mind.”
Legrand is mainly responsible for writing the lyrics and melodies, but the process of creating a song is very much a collaborative effort, starting with basic elements like a certain sound or string of words, then building it up together.
“We’re both in control of what kinds of sounds we want to put on our 4-track and mixer and how we’re going to record it,” Legrand said. “I tend to write from the piano or keyboard or organ, whatever tools I find, and then we build it together. We deal with it like (the songs) are skeletons and just add flesh.”
What makes Beach House stand out is the duo’s ability to retain the pleasantly eerie skeletons of their songs, even through the luxuriant fleshiness of the music’s overlapping layers of chiming, melancholy organs and soulful lyrics.
“Sure, you’ve got a handle on the past/It’s why you keep your little lovers in your lap,” Legrand sings like an old blues singer on “Gila,” a single from their latest album, “Devotion.”
The gothic, spooky vastness of the music would be fitting for a film by David Lynch, who happens to be one of Legrand’s favorite directors. And while she said that her admiration for him doesn’t directly inspire her musical creation, the themes and moods of Lynch’s films and Beach House’s music are too similar to go unnoted.
“I really love California, and I feel like he captures it,” Legrand said. “This land is so old and huge, it feels like you’re in the end of an era, with this dilapidated glamour, and you feel like there’s ghosts everywhere. … I just feel like he really embodies that spookiness.”
Since the release of their first self-titled album in 2006, Beach House released their second album, “Devotion,” in early 2008 to vast critical acclaim and began touring around the world with few long-term breaks since its release.
Citing Norway and Vancouver as places with good times and great audiences, Legrand also expressed a love for playing in and exploring the West, particularly California and the desert, where the band just finished filming a video for their latest single, “Used to Be.”
The experiences and emotions accumulated on tour have proved to inspire much of the song’s lyrical content.
“Life has changed since we tour so much, and my life is very much on the road with other people,” Legrand said.
“There are things I’ve witnessed and felt, and what other people feel, and I try to use all of that as an inspiration to me. Love is an inspiration to me. … It’s all part of it.”
“Used to Be,” which is set to be released on Oct. 21, was a product of Beach House’s latest European tour.
“We both knew it was going to be a single because it’s a very of-the-moment sort of thing,” Legrand said.
“It came directly out of our experiences and emotions that fueled a lot of the lyrical content. … It was definitely a love child, but that’s what music is.”
Beach House played in Los Angeles last spring, but for their show here tonight, Legrand said that they brush off any preconceived stereotype about the city being a hard town to play.
“I have no expectations whatsoever,” she said. “We just hope people want to come see us because they like the music and want to let us know. … I don’t think it matters where you are.”