Beulah
The Coast is Never Clear
[Velocette; 2001]
It's times like these that I begin to worry. Sure, over the last year or two my tastes in music have swung drastically toward the experimental and the avant-garde. But no matter how much noise I've listened to, I've always managed to retain my love for the straight-up pop song. After all, were it not for power chords and lush melodies, it's unlikely I ever would have bothered to step foot in a record store to begin with. If nothing else, I owe pop music a debt for first grabbing my ear and refusing to let go.
This is why, when I listened to Beulah's The Coast is Never Clear for the first time, I got worried. This disc is loaded with pretty melodies, classic pop hooks, loud guitars over layers of strings and horns, and even the occasional ragtime piano or steel guitar, all built on a foundation of harmonic ba-dop-bop-bops. And yet, for some reason, nothing about it grabbed me. I began to fear the worst. Had the Nihilistic Spasm Bands and Acid Mothers Temples of the world spoiled pop music for me?
After a few listens, it all came into focus: the problem wasn't mine; it was Beulah's. Beulah's previous album, When Your Heartstrings Break, was a masterpiece of orchestral 60s-style pop. From start to finish, it was catchy and unique, taking the style of 60s pop and turning it into something uniquely its own, replete with clever lyrics and impossible-to-shake hooks. On the surface, Beulah appears to have successfully replicated this formula. The Coast is Never Clear sounds a lot like its predecessor, but it lacks the originality and heartfelt delivery that won When Your Heartstrings Break a constant presence in so many disc players a couple summers back. Instead, Beulah now joins the ranks of bands like Ashley Park, and have been demoted from innovators to imitators.
The album's opening chords are lifted almost directly from the Turtles' 1969 hit "You Showed Me." The songs that follow, "A Good Man is Easy to Kill" and "What Will You Do When Your Suntan Fades?," incorporate hooks that bear hints of resemblance to the Flaming Lips' "The Spark That Bled" and Blur's "Coffee and TV," respectively.
Of course, given the finite number of chord progressions in the world, it's inevitable that some musical phrases rear their heads repeatedly. Still, to place such familiar themes at the beginning of the album-- and so close to one another, at that-- is like McDonald's hanging a picture of a Whopper in its window. I'm not accusing Beulah of thievery; they make use of these phrases in an original way, building new (and yes, even catchy) songs out of them. But when I hear them I can't help but think of a handful of bands that do this sort of thing just as well, if not better.
Still, it's not quite so embarrassing as when the band recycles their own hooks. "Gene Autry" and "Silver Lining" both sound unmistakably like songs from When Your Heartstrings Break. Similarly, the lyrics on The Coast is Never Clear rarely stray far from the lyrical home built on the previous album-- loneliness, the west, and boring parties return as popular topics. But rather than elaborating on a theme (as David Byrne has over the course of a million and two songs about discomfort with success, or trying to find a home, for example), one gets the impression that the band is merely recycling what worked.
This is certainly the case structurally. Most of these songs follow the pattern established on Heartstrings. With a few exceptions, they work like normal pop songs, but with more parts, often popping up at the bridge, at which point the band will present three of four tangential themes before wrapping up with another round of verse/chorus. It's a fun take on traditional song structure-- inventive without ever straying too far from home. Still, two-thirds of the way in, the Beulah formula becomes just as tiresome as that of conventional 50s pop songs.
That's not to say The Coast is Never Clear is without its moments. "I heard he wrote you a song/ But so what?/ Some guy wrote 69/ And one just ain't enough," sings Mikes Kurosky on "Popular Mechanics for Lovers," while a fingerpicked banjo dances with acoustic guitar on a floor made of strings, horns and synth swoops. A few seconds later, all but a few strings and piano drops out, and the indie in-jokes give way to Kurosky's reverb-drenched voice singing of "trying all the time to find/ Something that would make you mine/ But all I ever find, my love/ Are clichs that don't rhyme."
"Gravity's Bringing Us Down" follows, another strong moment, suggesting the album might salvage itself before the end. The band harmonizes, "We're getting high/ But we're still feeling down/ Gravity finds a way/ Of pinning us to the ground." The song progresses, switching from part to part in the trademark style described above. As the four-minute mark approaches, the bassist picks up a simple yet effective riff, injecting energy into the proceedings, and driving the song in a new direction. As he repeats himself, the other musicians' parts collapse into a cacophony that sounds equal parts Yo La Tengo and Elf Power. From a band so reliant on well-structured songs, it's an exciting moment. It's a shame that the rest of the album passes without many more of them.
When Your Heartstrings Break was a drastic change for Beulah, the addition of countless session musicians transforming them from a stripped-down pair of Pavement wannabes into 60s-pop-revisionists supreme. Perhaps, The Coast is Never Clear could have benefited from another such shift-in-direction. As it is, too many of the songs here sound like reheated leftovers from the band's previous effort.
On the one hand, I'm relieved. I still have a place in my heart for pop music after all. On the other hand, if The Coast is Never Clear is any sign, one of pop's most promising groups seems content to merely rest on their laurels. Are the songs catchy? Yes. But once they've caught you, they don't take you anywhere.
Posted to Pitchfork by David M. Pecoraro on October 29, 2001.
