by: Sean Boy
The September 11th street date of Beulah’s third full-length The Coast is Never Clear is a tragic mistake. Three months too late. It should have been available for the soundtrack to summer. Actually every Beulah record should be released at the beginning of summer. Beulah are sunshine pop provocateurs. From “Gene Autry:” “When I get to California gonna write my name in the sand. Gonna lay this body down and watch the waves roll in. And when the city spreads out, just like a cut vein, everybody drowns, sad and lonely.” Not only do their songs provoke images of sunshine, another kind of energy bubbles underneath— the members of Beulah provoking each other. Principle song writers Miles Kurosky and Bill Swan get along like cat and dog, but somehow their frequent clashes lead to brilliantly written, arranged, and recorded pop songs. They’ve been described as “Pavement with soul.” Unlike their stunningly gorgeous sophomore album, When Your Heartstrings Break, Beulah uses pre-synthesizer keyboard sounds to replace a large string section. And instead of bringing in a specific musician to record a specific instrument, if the band were looking for a particular sound, tubular bells for example, they’d rent the instrument and figure it out themselves. Regardless of how they do it, Beulah strikes again with a canon-worthy effort. And if your glass is always half-full this album will extend your summer another three months and you’ll be walking on the pier humming Beulah’s infectious melodies in November.
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