Victoria Legrand scares the hell out of me. “Walk in the Park” may be one of the most beautifully crafted pop songs of our generation, yet seeing her croon lyrics like “In a matter of time, it will slip from my mind, in and out of my life, you would slip from my mind” while blankly staring beyond the physical world and thwarting about like Carrie White on prom night provokes a different sensation altogether. She wears only black, says little, and often spends the time she’s not singing lurched over her keyboards, letting her devil-may-care nest of hair flop about as if it were some crazed hippie on fire at Burning Man. If this were Salem 1692, it wouldn’t be out of line to assume that she wasn’t exactly on the town’s good side. And yet this instinctual fear is a big part of what makes Beach House so compelling: they push the limits of normalcy to the breaking point by building a world in which the everyday becomes increasingly bizarre, a world where something as mundane as a stroll through the neighborhood becomes the catalyst for a severe existential crisis. The songs, at their core, are rooted in a familiar pop formula. But rather than remain conventional, Beach House uses this tried-and-true structure to their advantage, reconstructing and pushing the boundaries to create a mood that is entirely their own. They’ve been branded as “dream pop”, and I’d be hard-pressed to think of a more fitting term. Their latest album, “Teen Dream”, makes a grand argument for the record as a cohesive whole, something that demands to be sat down with and listened to again and again. Their live show is no different. One wouldn’t think Prospect Park to be an ideal place to see this band, but the outdoor venue, coupled with beautiful weather and an approaching sunset, worked to their advantage. Somber tracks like “Silver Soul” and “Better Times” somehow became even more melancholy in this environment, while more upbeat songs like “Master of None” and “Norway” carried an added punch while remaining faithful to their recorded counterparts. With only organ, guitar and minimal drums behind her, Legrand’s voice remains the group’s most vital asset. When she asks, “Don’t I know you, better than the rest?”, I can’t help but hope she’s talking to me.

The National, however, carry a different kind of weight. Having honed their particular brand of American pop over the course of five albums spanning a decade, this show served as a sort of homecoming of sorts. Guitarist Bryce Dessner remarked that this is “the first show we’ve played where we can walk to”, and the band clearly felt at home here, playing a marathon 21 songs that drew from their last three albums. Their latest album, “High Violet”, has been universally praised as their finest effort, they recently played Radio City in addition to having being filmed by D.A. Pennebaker at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and last night wrapped up a sold-out show at Terminal 5. When I saw them in 2007 they were all casually dressed down in jeans and t-shirts; today they uniformly sport immaculate designer suits, yet still never fail to deliver dryly comical lines like “Sorrow found me when I was young—sorrow waited, sorrow won.” Some find their demeanor boring, but, like Beach House, this is a group that demands a sharp degree of attention before their craft can be fully realized. Songs like “Afraid of Everyone” and “Anyone’s Ghost” showcase singer Matt Berninger’s concise gift for constructing melodies that seem to trip over one-another, while highlights like “Mistaken For Strangers” and “Apartment Story” prove why Bryan Devendorf is the best drummer in rock music today—he’s less concerned with playing a backbeat than establishing a concise counterpoint to Berninger’s twisted musings on the quiet desperation of everyday people, adding a dramatic depth to stories that would likely fall flat otherwise. This is what makes the National such a compelling band: the ways in which each member adds their fabric to the whole, in the process creating movements that ultimately add up to be greater than the sum of their parts. The fact that they’re seeing success at this point shouldn’t be a revelation, but a relief.

Photo by: Jason Nocito