One hails from Baltimore, Maryland, the other arrives there by way of Paris (and later Philadelphia). Dream pop duo Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand have been producing and performing as Beach House since 2004, and have six albums under their proverbial belts. Late last year, they released much-hyped Depression Cherry and a few months later, unexpectedly dropped a second record, Thank Your Lucky Stars. Both were critically acclaimed. Legrand calls Scally “her musical soulmate” – though it’s a purely platonic relationship – and there’s no better place to watch that chemistry play out than on stage. Next month, Beach House begins its eight date tour of Australia, playing the Laneway Festival circuit, as well as more intimate venues like Melbourne’s 170 Russell and the Sydney Opera House.

ELLE:*You and Alex started Beach House in your early twenties, and this year it’s going to be ten years since your debut album was released. How do you approach music differently now, as opposed to the way you did then?*

VICTORIA LEGRAND: I feel like, speaking on behalf of the last two albums that we just put out, when we are working on new music now it’s more exciting than ever, just because of how much we have already done. You just can’t ever take for granted the moments when music comes into your life, or when music comes into your head. You know when you hear a song for the first time and it is brand new? I think we just cherish those moments more deeply now, the older that we are. When we were younger, we were very passionate about it but there’s something about getting older that everything has some sort of, you can feel everything more, I don’t know how to describe it but I think we just cherish it more and more.

With your history together how do you avoid staying in a safe place and maintain a sense of discovery in your work?

I think it’s just very natural for us. I mean, we’re in a different period of our lives, I think that it’s true that you just change constantly, a little but every day. Everybody changes a little bit every day, so in some senses of it you’re a different person every time you turn around and approach something. You are never going to stay the same, and I think that Alex and I are good at embracing that and embracing those changes. I think because we are best friends, as we go through changes in our lives, you know personally, in every possible way, I think one thing has stayed the same, and that’s our language of working together, and so that when there is an idea, you know the way that we developing that ide I think it is still as playful I think as it ever was, you know, playful and still serious; we are able to work together without overanalysing too much.

Yeah…

So, I think that helps us be natural. I always just stay that whether you are a musician or not the best thing to do is just to listen to yourself as honestly as possible. That’s literally all we have been trying to do as people and as musicians who travel all over the place and have made six records.

How does Baltimore influence your work, if at all?

It doesn’t directly influence our work at all; we have yet to write a song about Baltimore. But you know the place itself; Alex was born and raised here, which is a big deal. I think when you’re born someplace it’s always sort of magnetically a part of your body. I’m a transplant but I moved over 10 years ago and it’s our home now. It’s my home base where I have good friends. The thing that we love the most is the practice space where we have written all of our records (except the first and second ones). But Teen Dream, Bloom, Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars were all written here. It’s a very special place for us. Alex is in there now actually, building these amazing light bulbs because we are doing some special stuff in the United States in the spring time. And I think that Baltimore, maybe not now but it used to be a pretty affordable place to live and when you are young and you don’t have any money, you’re a musician and you want to be in band… it was a great place for that.

Something that I think a lot of Beach House fans would experience is the way your songs very quickly come to symbolise moments in their lives, whether significant or seemingly minor. Do you have a similar experience, as the person creating and then performing the songs?

Probably not the exact same because I’m inside of it, but I do have moments where I can hear a song from the first record or two and I can really remember what was going on in that time in my life. So I have deep memories about where I was during the moments in my life when I was making these songs. But I don’t think that’s the exact same as someone who is listening to it for the first time. When I listen to other people’s music though, I have tonnes of feelings and trips, because music has always been emotional for me. Emotional and physical, those two things. When I hear a song that I will end up loving or meaning something to me, it’s because I have an emotional reaction to it. I immediately connect to it in an unspoken way, and if that happens to someone with our music, that’s amazing.

What was the decision behind having Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars being released so close to each other?

Well, we made two albums and we knew we had two albums’ worth of music. We wrote Depression Cherry and then we wrote Thank Your Lucky Stars and then we recoded them in the same studio, so we had a tonne of songs. Along the way we knew which one was going to be released in the sort of traditional manner - which was Depression Cherry - just because something about that record felt like it needed the ‘treatment’ of the album, you know that it comes out first and the press gets 10 months of advancement. Thank Your Lucky Stars, to me and Alex, had a rawer, punk energy and a bit more vitriol, a bit more attitude. So we were just like fuck it, it doesn’t need fluff. The real reason though, the real reason that it came out so quickly was that we thought it would be exciting and great for us to sing new sings all year round. You know, not just to have one album worth of material, we would have two albums and be able to bring a lot of life into our shows, into our touring life. The process of putting out a record - you have to wait ten months, and by the time that you put it out, you’re already getting moved on to something else - it can be really boring. It has become really boring to me as an artist. So putting the second one out so quickly really meant a lot to Alex and I. It’s very hard to keep a secret from the internet so to be able to do that feels like we pulled something off!

Would a move like that, in terms of suddenly dropping the album, be considered risky in an industry sense?

I mean not from my standpoint because I’m not like a suit, or a square. I think that labels always want to have as much time as possible so that they can do press and sell more records. So from a label standpoint, I’m sure they would like to have as much time as possible to shop it around. But as an artist, you know Alex and I are always going to be on the side of ourselves and our fans, and we didn’t particularly care to do it the traditional way. Our labels, Sub Pop, Mistletone, Bella Union… they kind of had to do it. It’s what the artist wants. We’re not on a major label so there’s not really anyone who can frighten us into doing otherwise. We really didn’t care about that. One record got the press beforehand, and the other got it afterwards. It’s a different kind of experience.

The vinyl editions for both of those albums were really special – the Depression Cherry sleeve having that red velvet coating, and Thank Your Lucky Stars with the emerald green record itself. Are those aesthetic choices something you’re particularly conscious of in terms of taking the experience of the record beyond what you hear?

I think that everything is important; you know it’s like a book. Maybe even more important because I feel like, for books, it doesn’t even matter as much. Album art is very important to us and always has been. All the choices made are our choices and we put a lot of care into every little detail, down to the colour of the vinyl. Nobody else picks that; it is us being very deliberate down to the number that is printed on the record. If it’s special for me, then I know it will be special for somebody else.

Your live shows are incredible and completely unique – I last saw you perform at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre – and I think a big part of that is the feeling of complete sensory immersion you create in terms of the sound, the lights and the visuals. Are you guys really involving in all those separate elements of the performance?

Oh everything. I mean the lights, the set pieces. I think when you went we had strings, a backdrop like a wall of strings that were all kind of at different heights.

Yes, that’s exactly it.

Yeah, Alex and I actually wove them ourselves, like strung them together. Alex has taken great pride in designing the last few set pieces. Right now, we are sort of travelling with a simpler design but, basically, we work with the lighting engineer and put a lot of thought into every song and the art of the show. The set list is always different too, every night it is slightly different because I don’t want it to be robotic. I want it to feel theatrical, because we do care about the show. It’s not just uploading into the amps. Sometimes I wish it was like that, but for the moment it’s more of a show. We just try and make something beautiful, that someone can feel and become immersed in as much as possible. I think that is why we are so invested in the lights. We did more of a light show, like more of a razzle-dazzle with the last tour, but now we have gone more with the vibe of things are changing and you’re feeling them more than you’re being ‘stunned’ by them. It’s a subtle elegance, but that is something that takes a lot of time. It takes months of touring to get all that running but hopefully we will be able to bring some light and darkness.