Beach House - B-Sides and Rarities

Beach House open the vault on B-Sides and Rarities, a 2017 collection of stray songs, alternate versions and hidden gems that sat just outside their albums, complete with a digital download card.

By the time it arrived, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally had spent more than a decade perfecting their slow-motion dream pop in Baltimore, and the songs that never made the tracklists turned out to be just as lovely as the ones that did. Far from a scrappy grab bag, it plays like a quiet, cohesive album in its own right.

Two previously unreleased songs lead the way. "Chariot" opens in a warm, hazy swirl with Legrand's voice floating somewhere above it, while "Baseball Diamond" drifts by like the memory of a summer evening. The 2008 single version of "Used to Be" shows how strong their songwriting already was early on, and "Norway" returns in a reworked version that bends its melody into new shapes.

Everything moves at the band's signature unhurried pace, a world of reverb, drum machines and sighing keyboards.

For fans who already know the albums by heart, this is a lovely way to explore the edges of the picture, and a reminder that Beach House rarely waste a note.