Dream pop and the question of what role vocals should play is where I locate the genre's central aesthetic argument.

There are essentially two positions on this. In the first, the voice is a texture element — present and emotionally significant, but not semantically privileged over the other sound elements. The words matter less than the timbre and the way the voice occupies the sonic space. This is the Cocteau Twins tradition.

In the second position, the voice is the lead and the production is in service of it. The melody and the lyrics are what you follow, and the lush production is there to create the emotional environment for the vocal performance to happen in. This is closer to the Beach House tradition.

Both produce great music. But they're doing different things, and conflating them leads to misreadings of what specific records are trying to accomplish.