"Once Twice Melody" Released: November 10, 2021[4]
"Hurts to Love" Released: February 14, 2022
Once Twice Melody is the eighth studio album by the American dream pop duo Beach House, released on February 18, 2022.[5] It is a double album of 18 songs, presented in four chapters.[1][6][7]
The first chapter was released on November 10, 2021,[8] the second on December 8, 2021,[9] and the third on January 19, 2022.[10] "Hurts to Love" was released as a standalone single on February 14, 2022, to coincide with Valentine's Day.[11]Once Twice Melody was released in full, by Sub Pop, on February 18, 2022.[12]
Once Twice Melody was released to universal acclaim from contemporary music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 84, based on 21 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim".[14] Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 7.8 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.[13]
Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Heather Phares claimed that, "Though Once Twice Melody is unapologetically lush even by Beach House's standards, the duo uses space creatively to express the beauty in sadness."[15] Stevie Chick of Mojo called it the band's "grandest vision yet", praising the "impassive beauty" of Legrand's vocals and comparing them to "O Superman-era Laurie Anderson serenades, or as if someone programmed AI to sing like Judee Sill."[19] Jason Anderson of Uncut commended the "stunning" cinematic quality of the first chapter and praised the album's "unexpected elements" for deftly counterbalancing the "grandeur and glamour from becoming sickly sweet." Uncut concluded that the album's "greatness lies not in its hugeness - it's in the duo's ability to create music that possesses the same intimacy regardless of its scope."[21]
Track listing[]
All tracks are written by Beach House.
Chapter 1 / Pink Funeral
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Once Twice Melody"
4:44
2.
"Superstar"
6:08
3.
"Pink Funeral"
4:56
4.
"Through Me"
5:48
Chapter 2 / New Romance
No.
Title
Length
5.
"Runaway"
4:23
6.
"ESP"
3:48
7.
"New Romance"
4:12
8.
"Over and Over"
7:11
Chapter 3 / Masquerade
No.
Title
Length
9.
"Sunset"
3:59
10.
"Only You Know"
4:49
11.
"Another Go Around"
3:41
12.
"Masquerade"
4:42
13.
"Illusion of Forever"
3:49
Chapter 4 / Modern Love Stories
No.
Title
Length
14.
"Finale"
4:34
15.
"The Bells"
4:30
16.
"Hurts to Love"
4:05
17.
"Many Nights"
4:16
18.
"Modern Love Stories"
4:53
Total length:
84:28
Personnel[]
Beach House – arrangement, performance; production, engineering; art direction
^ abChick, Stevie (March 2022). "Beach House – Once Twice Melody: Baltimore duo transcend dream-pop with 18 tracks of mesmerising digital psychedelia". Mojo. No. 340. p. 83.
^ abAnderson, Jason (March 2022). "Beach House – Once Twice Melody: Baltimore duo's dream-pop swells to new proportions on masterful eighth album". Uncut. No. 298. p. 33.