Shoe-gazing

Decent dream pop: Beach House’s Once Twice Melody reviewed

Grade: B+ Everything these days devolves to prog — and not always very good prog. Where once synths were vastly expensive, difficult to master and hell to maintain they are now in a place beyond ubiquity; every sound you want conjured by the press of a key, your song suddenly washed over with sonics that make it sound more important than it really is. It almost makes you yearn for Yes and ELP — at least they knew they were pretentious dullards using electronic wizardry to elevate the slightest of compositions. Dream pop and its self-harming kid sister shoe-gazing — both genres dating from the mid-1980s and the likes of