Listen: Beach House's "7"

Music always has had a difficult relationship with consistency. Churn out the same stuff over and over again, people begin to get bored and stop caring, but change your sounds all too quickly, that's reason enough to get fans agitated and riled up. Is there a magical middle ground that signals when a band should start switching up their palette? Is it three albums into their discography? Or Four? Or Five? For dream-pop duo Beach House, it's 7, also the name of their newest album, where they not only sound alive and different (almost Slowdive-like!), but also seamlessly move from dreamy to disorienting to meditative to psychedelic, sketching what's their most aqueous, haziest album yet, all the while taking us through familiar territory and forcing us to look at them in new light. But like Pitchfork rightly observes, "measuring Beach House albums against one another is tricky - how do you compare daydreams?" Immerse yourself in bliss below (or via YouTube) -