REVIEW: Beulah, When Your Heartstrings Break (Sugar Free)
- Scott Slonaker
Beulah's claim to fame so far is that they were the first "outside" act to release an album on the Elephant 6 label, home of everyone's (or at least the music press') favorite long-monikered experimental retro-pop bands. While Beulah does seem to share some sonic common ground with the collective, most notably the Apples in Stereo, this reviewer is rather ill-prepared to debate the merits of Beulah's current release with the label's crop of artists.
That out of the way, When Your Heartstrings Break is very high-quality indie-pop, exhibiting most of the advantages and disadvantages that go with the designation. In other words, you get a short album of slightly deadpan, assymmetrical, occasionally brilliant, sometimes-soundalike hummables with song titles seemingly assigned at random. This is the quintet's second album, and first not recorded on a four-track, as was 1997's Handsome Western States. From the sound of it, the band was mighty excited to use real recording equipment, so they dressed everything up with no less than eighteen additional guest musicians and a dozen other instruments (everything from violin to accordion). The problem is that it feels like they're using all of their tricks, all at once, on every song, which negates some of the variety. The relative lack of choruses and overabundance of hooks makes one wish these boys had some outside production help. Vocals, from frontman and songwriter Miles Kurosky, are solid if standard and McCartney-ish.
Still, the album's veritable cornucopia of sound results in some marvelous tracks. The first three tracks, "Score From Augusta" "Sunday Under Glass", and "Matter Vs. Space", all possess guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, assorted horns, flute, strings, and additional percussion- and are still boppy, under-three-minute wonders. "Emma Blowgun's Last Stand" stretches out into somewhat of a keyboard dreamscape, before pulling its second half into an actual song. And the baroque flutter of "Calm Go the Wild Seas" is endearing.
So, if you wish the mid-nineties Guided By Voices hadn't spammed quite so much, or that Pavement would be more fun if it only tossed in a few Pet Sounds frills, or that all these psychedelic-pop experimentalist collectives would stop noodling endlessly and get to the goddamn point, Where Your Heartstrings Break is likely to be your cup of latte. Despite the album's soundalike nature, the sheer volume of hooks is sure to impress. Hopefully, Beulah will be around for years to come.
