Beach House‘s decision to call this recordBloomis almost too perfect. Over the course of four albums that’s exactly what this band has done. Two people from Baltimore started by making incense-smelling, curtains-drawn bedroom pop. Now, eight years later, they make luminous, sky-sized songs that conjure some alternate universe whereCocteau Twinshave headlined every stadium on Atlantis. “Bloom” is also what these 10 songs do, each one starting with the sizzle of a lit fuse and at some fine moment exploding like a firework in slow motion. The word captures the music’s slow sonority: the round, gleaming edges ofAlex Scally‘s arpeggios and how, inVictoria Legrand‘s unhurried mouth, all words seem to have a few extra vowels.

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