The tricky thing about mood music is that you have to be in the mood for it.
On its swirling, densely layered fifth album, “Depression Cherry,” Baltimore pop duo Beach House — Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally — establish a number of moods across nine tracks. But whether the tempo has urgency or moves more languidly, the entire set remains in a low gear. The songs can feel soporific or energizing depending on the moment in which you are listening.
Repeated listens help in unpacking the subtle pleasures that lie within the album’s tracks: The stealthy manner in which a martial tempo gently marches into the scene-setting opener, “Levitation,” or the way the synths pulsate and tick on “Wildflower.”
The overall sensation is a combination of wispiness and fullness. Woozy, whizzing keyboard and organ lines rise and fall; beats stutter-step. Legrand’s girlish, airy voice — sometimes submersed in liquid reverb — colors in the lines with lyrics that alternately demand your attention or wash by as part of the overall soundscape.
While previous Beach House albums have been more conventionally accessible from a melodic and structural standpoint, “Depression Cherry” offers a lot of possibilities if you’re looking to get lost in your headphones, from the tremulous, dreamy “Space Song” to the choir of sighs on closer “Days of Candy.”
On the other hand, the band’s placid surfaces prove difficult to dent. It’s hard to listen to the album even repeatedly without hearing one song bleeding into the next, rolling on a wave of gauzy, droning atmospherics.
If you are a Beach House fan and want a shimmering soundtrack to serve as a backdrop for daydreaming, then “Depression Cherry” should fit the bill. For everyone else, your mileage may vary wildly, even within the span of one listen.
ESSENTIAL “Space Song”
Listen to “Space Song”: