The atmosphere was electric at Montreal’s Theatre Rialto for this sold our gig of the Baltimore duo. For one, the grandiose and slightly faded theater seemed like a perfect foil for their show – wishing there were more gigs at this amazing venue. Capacity is quite small and you could tell there were a lot of hardcore fans in the room.

After a brief atmospheric electronic set from Moth of Aura, the Beach House musicians appeared on stage, dressed in all in black, followed by Victoria Legrand, spectral in a white tunic hiding behind her long mop of hair. A mysterious figure, we didn’t really see her face for most of the show.

But what she may lack in people skills, she more than made up with the rest. Trading the softly-softly approach of her album vocals, her voice tonight was more gutsy than dreamy, without a signle note out of place. She played equal parts her synth and her guitars. With live drums and a bass added to the usual two-man show, everything was bigger, deeper and more forceful than we’re used to. In a silent moment after PPP, someone in the crowd shouted “You were perfect”, and he was right.

Anybody that knows the span of the band’s 6 albums (including two from last year) understand this was no headtrashing gig. The etheral songs were rendered slowly but boldly. The highlight of the show was definitely 10 Mile Stereo, a song that surges and intensifies by stages until it becomes bombastic explosion of drums, voice and clashing guitars, accompanied by strobe lights. The stage was simply dressed with a white stretched veil decor on which soft projections were made, sometimes lighting up with a backdrop of shining starlight.

When Legrand addressed the crowd, it was a little ackwardly. Noticing the balcony seemed so close, she told people upstairs she would “touch” them tonight. Then, after Silver Soul, that love is all that matters. That not everybody gets love and she is grateful to be getting some from the fans. Tonight, Beach House wanted to give some love back. The warm fuzzy feeling I left this gig with confirms they probably succeeded.

The Setlist:

Beyond Love
Other People
PPP
All Your Yeahs
Silver Soul
Space Song
10 Mile Stereo
One Thing
Wishes
10:37
Master Of None
Wildflower
Take Care
Elegy to the Void
Myth

Encore:
Sparks

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Julie was born from a trumpeter dad and a drummer mum with music written in her DNA. She is from this generation that went from listening to vinyl, to creating mixtapes on cassettes, to splurging her early savings on a CD player, to discovering Napster, the iPod and so on... In 2005 she took part in the launch of Radiolibre, Quebec's first music streaming service and in 2006 started Palmares.ca, a francophone MP3 store. She spent 10 years looking after over 80 Canadian radio websites and has a ticket stub diary of over 300 shows.