Steve Kiviat reviewed an August 2007 Beach House performance for The Washington Post:

On Beach House's 2006 self-titled CD debut, the Baltimore duo offered languid cinematic soundscapes that mixed Victoria Legrand's ethereal vocals over her synths finger work and guitarist Alex Scally's arsenal of psychedelic and slack key strumming. Gorgeous but including too many numbers with similar arrangements, the album was most captivating on cuts where the band tweaked its metronomic backbeat or highlighted more straightforward pop melodies.

At the Rock & Roll Hotel on Sunday night, the group displayed these same characteristics in an hour-long set that mixed songs destined for its 2008 sophomore effort with compositions from the first release. Determined to be mysterious about their new songs, the two would not reveal titles, and Legrand's slurred lyrical delivery and the lack of traditional choruses did little to suggest the identities. New songs and old both conveyed a hazy mood demonstrated most strikingly by Legrand's vocal tics, classical music touches and spacey synthesizer effects that mimicked the sounds of a church organ and pedal steel guitar.

However, Beach House sounded best when it moved out of the fog. On "Master of None," Legrand forcefully laid a catchy hook over a steady drum machine beat. "Childhood" sounded pretty, thanks in part to sensual vocals and shimmering, twangy, Hawaiian-style rhythms. On a few cuts, Jason Quever, the singer from the opening act the Papercuts, joined in on drums, adding distinctive percussive accents. By evening's end, though, the duo frustratingly moved back into soundtrack land, wasting some mesmerizing, fuzzy guitar work and glorious Hammond organ lines on what amounted to a background song without unique structure.