Audio By Carbonatix
Beulah
Beulah, Colorado, is a lovely hamlet nestled between the Wet Mountains, just 25 miles southwest of Pueblo. On the Fourth of July, Beulah, Wyoming, is home to the “Largest Parade in the Smallest Town” in the country. Beulah, North Dakota, boasts a nine-hole putting green made of real grass. Beulah, Oregon, doesn’t boast anything much. In Baltimore, Beulah is a cherished 70-year-old crossing guard. In Texas, Beulah Soap is made of goat’s milk. In San Francisco, there are two Beulahs — one a little street between Frederick and Waller, and the other a slightly loopy, delightful pop band that would probably appreciate the Wet Mountains, real grass, goat’s milk, and a 70-year-old crossing guard. Led by the unduly humble Miles Kurosky, Beulah has become one of the most precious wrinkles in the Elephant 6 collective. Even though the band plays live far too rarely to please its most earnest supporters, in the studio Beulah continues to harvest the rich silt deposited by early Beatles and Beach Boys currents.
The title of its latest benefaction, When Your Heartstrings Break (released last year on Sugar Free Records), can be taken as affectionate and sincere advice. This album is not the result of anguish but an antidote for it — a remedy that’s made noticeably sweeter by the presence of a full orchestra, but that would be just as irresistible unadorned. Beulah is good for you. It is additive-free — no self-obsessed irony, maudlin posturing, or rebellious artifice. Beulah is so pure it floats. And if you understand the 11th song on the all-too-short album — “If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart” — you’ll float too.
Silke Tudor
