Sparks

Album: Depression Cherry (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • This somber, dreamy number by Beach House finds Victoria Legrand singing of the inextinguishable spark-like core of a person's being. "I feel that some of the words are quite direct in a certain way. I think it's addressing certain energies in our world as humans," she told NPR.

    Legrand added that at the end of the song, when she croons, "Make it, wave it, alive," she is singing about the moment when "the grander, more abstract realm" connects with something more direct. "It's that moment when music and words become the feeling," Legrand explained. "I feel like that's sort of the ideal for us in music, for ourselves; when we feel it, we know that it's right. That moment is almost like a metaphor for what we aspire to."
  • The song starts with a vocal loop the duo accidentally captured at a soundcheck in Bristol, England. The Beach House pair were so fascinated by the sound of the loop that they held up their phones to record the loop of Legrand's ethereal voice, which now runs throughout the song. "The chaos is what excited us so much," multi-instrumentalist Alex Scally said.
  • Asked about the meaning of the album title by Under The Radar magazine, Victoria Legrand replied: "'Depression cherry' - those are words that came out of my mouth somewhere in the middle, and those are two words that have never been side by side before. They have always been near each other but never right next to each other, and I think when they were uttered in a completely different context, it was playful. But they just because part of our lives, and as we continued working on the record, they kept coming back, especially as we were working on titles."

    "It just kept coming. It was gravitating toward the album, and eventually it just stuck. We couldn't find anything better - we tried. It's saying you're going to do what you want, because you believe in it. That's essentially full of love. You're not putting something in the world that you don't believe in."

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