Life in Full... Beach House, Bloom.

Constructing upon the critical acclaim garnered by previous long-player Teen Dream may be one thing – and one that Bloom achieves with the unhurried ease of their finest output itself – although the Baltimore pairing comprising Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally have vocally established their intent to mature; to continue to mould that woozy signature sound. Like the barely legible yet perfectly smooth and somehow utterly beautiful scribble of a slowly fossilising being in the red-eyed throes of a mildly berserk hallucination, the very sound of Beach House has become an inimitable entity and one that engenders an instant affection for and endearment toward. It's like the numbing comfort inescapably linked with the fashioning of snowballs from gelid slush; like the inexplicable joy of pins and needles: a thing of unfathomable, big time sensuality.

This nigh on tangible loveliness is apparent from the off: you'll have doubtless heard Myth and consequently you'll doubtless already adore Myth although the snuggly guitar tones and cruddy rudimentary drum machine thuds of Wild ought to incrementally enhance that blossoming sentimentality sensed for the pair. It is of course a tame beast for such designation – indeed much of Bloom ambles along at the same torpid pace – although the expected absence of savageness is recuperated in their great sagacity: why dash about hastily when you can slumberously saunter? Why pain yourself on prickly things when you may recline atop the comparatively lo-fi lusciousness of Lazuli?

Rhetoric aside, not every track flowers fully: New Year sounds as though a bud prematurely snatched from stem as it pitters and patters about helplessly in the variegated mundanity of Mylo Xyloto like a beached carp (albeit one smooched by the incomparable Legrand), whilst The Hours is she and Scally painting by pretty insipid numbers. However they know what they're doing and when they do it well, by God does Bloom veritably erupt in spurts of polychromatic vividness: whether that be the doleful swoon to Troublemaker or the petrifyingly unsteady creak of On The Sea – during which Scally's guitar palpably bawls; let alone weeps – moments of soaring majesty are rather omnipresent. The latter is to Bloom what Gila was to Devotion; what 10 Mile Stereo was to Teen Dream: an aurally picturesque moment of consummate perfection. It is concluded by the harsh gusts and lapping tides of tempest as it slowly melts away into the oneiric waft that is Irene. Although not quite the fifteen-plus epic to which its tracklisted running time intimates, it shatters that figurative mould aforesaid to a certain degree in that it serves as a relentless gush of crescendo that requires the seven-odd minutes of silence that procede it as respiratory respite, such is its overwhelming and empowering allure. It's Beach House at their most breathless, and so too is the gloopy sloop of Other People.

Alex Scally may purport to Bloom sounding like "an entirely different world" to their anything previous and although such affirmation is certainly contestable, the undeniable waking reality is that Beach House, right now, are in a world of their own.