As we’d arranged, we knocked on the door of the apartment where Beach House were staying in the early afternoon of a warm Sydney day, ready to film. Pretty soon it became clear that there had been a miscommunication: turned out Beach House weren’t traveling with acoustic instruments. (Victoria says too often acoustic music sounds like reggae!)  After mutual faffing, umm-ing and ahh-ing, Amelia ducked home and picked up a guitar she’d often heard her flatmate gently strumming in her room. (Yes you may recognise this guitar, we had to borrow it when we filmed An Horse too.) We all piled into the car with renewed enthusiasm and headed to the beach.

While she drove, Victoria sat in the backseat thumping two novels together and warming her vocal chords with TLC’s Waterfalls. The heavy paperbacks made a nice deep sound but were abandoned when we got to Tamarama Beach.  So the guitar problem was solved but we still needed a drum. Amelia rummaged through the boot of her car; a pair of heels, a tennis racket, an old coat and a pile of books and paper. The boys headed off in search of something else they could use.

Meanwhile Victoria and Amelia poked around and found an empty bottle of alcohol and an abandoned lemon, and Jonathan tried to figure out how to shoot the band without slipping and falling on the wet rocks.

Eventually returning with a sandy bucket, the boys nestled into a small space Victoria had spotted between boulders.  With the rumble of the ocean behind them, and surfers in the distance, they began playing a new tune.

Used To Be has become one of our favourite videos, one we could watch over and over again.

*photos by Jefferton James

– Amelia

www.beachhousemusic.net
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