Beach House

For the most part, Victoria Legrand is the perfect interviewee – courteous, friendly, and happy to answer any question. But when I make the mistake of referring to Beach House as a "buzz band", she bristles audibly, and I fear the conversation may have taken a turn for the worse. I backtrack quickly, but she's not offended. "No," she explains, "it's just that the phrase makes me think of those bands that don't really do any work".

I used the phrase, though, simply to note that Beach House have attained a status that, to most other bands, is enviable. Over the past couple of years their profile has risen in a very modern manner, their career following a by-now familiar upward spiral involving a frenzy of blogging and the obligatory 8-point score on Pitchfork. The dreamy, woozy sound of their 2006 self-titled debut drew admiration from critics and other bands alike (Grizzly Bear are big fans), and the richer, more focused follow-up Devotion confirmed that they're making some of the most distinctive and interesting music around today.

But you can see why she might take offence at any notion that Beach House might belong in the ranks of the record-company-hyped 15-minute wonders who seem to have success handed to them on a plate: on talking to her, it becomes immediately obvious that Beach House work very hard indeed. When I ask what she's doing, she explains that the band are in the middle of a practice session for a show the following night in Pittsburgh, and casually mentions that "I have to go to work later". It turns out that both band members (when they're not on tour, at least) have day jobs: Legrand works as a bartender 3 or 4 nights a week, and guitarist Alex Scally works as a freelance carpenter. It highlights a harsh economic truth about the current internet-driven, free-music-for-everyone climate, which even relatively successful musicians must live with: bloggers may get you noticed, but they won't pay your bills.

Added to this is the huge workload that falls on the shoulders of a band with only two members: "You know, I could never have conceived of the amount of work that has to take place. When we came back from touring in Europe last time I thought there'd be a break, but no…It's not enough to make music: you have to do PR, talk to people all the time, take care of every aspect of it. Going on tour is actually like a break in a way." Needless to say, the business side of being in a band can sometimes get in the way of the creative side: "It's kind of like you want to have sex, but there's so many things to do that you don't have time to get in the mood – you want to make music, but there's so much other stuff to be done. You learn to make time, I guess."

The band have made time quite impressively, in fact, with a gap of just over a year between albums. On Devotion, Legrand's imposing, classically-trained vocals are again complemented beautifully by Scally's elegant, reverb-soaked guitar riffs, and I suggest there must be a shared aesthetic between them. "I guess there are a lot of points where we agree, we like a lot of classic stuff – Motown, John Cale, Neil Young's Expecting to Fly – those all have a certain feeling or quality to them. Alex likes the production aspect of stuff, he's just discovered Kate Bush so he's listening to her all the time now, which is funny…I'm listening to a lot of friends' bands right now, bands from Baltimore – Arbouretum, Human Bell." (members of Arbouretum and San Francisco's excellent Papercuts will be joining them on percussion for their upcoming shows.)

I mention, too, the visual aspect of their music: there's a certain creepy, late-night-movie feel to it, something they play around with to fine effect in their videos (the above You Came To Me, Gila). She acknowledges a love of cinema: "I think visually when I write lyrics and music. Not like literal or concrete situations, but in terms of images. I like a lot of early French movies, also David Gordon Green; a movie of his called George Washington…I always liked David Lynch too. I like movies where it seems like there's nothing going on, but underneath the banal surface it's kinda scary. I liked No Country for Old Men too, I got really into that... I like things that are intense. There's a necessity for intensity in the world, I think".

The last statement gives a clue both to how Beach House managed to produce the deep, slow-burning brilliance of Devotion, and why so many listeners have responded to it. Indeed, Legrand echoes the album's title when she talks about the dedication needed to deal with the band's punishing workload: "You just have to take that risk, of basically devoting your life to something".