Beach House – “The Traveller” (Singles Going Steady)

Johjn Bergstrom: How you gauge the success of this track depends on how satisfied you are with Beach House simply sounding like Beach House. To these ears, it’s not quite enough to overcome the fact the song says all it has to say by 1:33 while the running time is 4:03. [6/10]

Pryor Stroud: Beach House’s name has become synonymous with the melancholic, ethereal dream-pop Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand have purveyed since their 2006 eponymous debut. In “The Traveller”, a drifting wayward-soul ballad from last year’s Thank Your Lucky Stars, this trademark sound is fully present. Sonically, the track flows forward with a swirling accretion of guitar shimmers, organ bellows, and ponderous percussion, evoking a distinctive feeling of homecoming — of opening a door to find someone you’ve been waiting to see — that still feels, in some indeterminate way, unsatisfactory. Indeed, the song seems to suggest: maybe this someone wasn’t waiting for you. [7/10]

Steve Horowitz: The ethereal nature of the song suggests that traveling is mostly an inward journey, and what Beach House finds there seems to be mostly emptiness. The truism is that it’s not the destination, but the journey. The trip here offers no reward, which makes the song a bit hollow (in a good way). Not every encounter has to have meaning. The thoughts in our head don’t need to be life changers. Profundity is a state of mind. That said, this ditty has a spooky charm and if it has nothing else, so be it. [6/10]

Chad Miller: The organ part was so amazing here. It made all of the fabulous chords pop even more. Really, all of the music was just exceptional from start to finish, and Legrand’s vocals were fully capable of stepping into the immense world Beach House has created. [10/10]

SCORE: 7.25