BEULAH: THE COAST IS NEVER CLEAR (2001)
1) Hello Resolven; 2) A Good
Man Is Easy To Kill; 3) What Will You Do When Your Suntan Fades?; 4) Gene
Autry; 5) Silver Lining; 6) Popular Mechanics For Lovers; 7) Gravity's Bringing
Us Down; 8) Hey Brother; 9) I'll Be Your Lampshade; 10) Cruel Minor Change; 11)
Burned By The Sun; 12) Night Is The Day Turned Inside Out.
If this line of thinking applies to a band as
intellectually twisted as Beulah at all, then this album should probably count
as their masterpiece. You can almost feel their brain cells writhe, sizzle, and
burn up in flames, as they attempt to come up with «the perfect pop formula». Instrumentation,
production, hooks, moods, vocal modulations that reflect careful study of what
there was before with a pinch of trying to look into what will come after — the
Amazing Songwriting Laboratory of Dr. Kurosky at its functional peak, colored smoke
rising out of the chimneys and bizarre fragrance smelled for miles around.
But the more they try, the more they baffle
listeners such as myself (and I have also encountered the same reaction among quite
a few music lovers on the Web). Every single song on The Coast sounds lovely, classy, and inspiring... while it's on. No sooner than the album
is over, nothing remains in my brain
— not a single goddamn note of it. And subsequent listens do not rectify the
situation. This is their best album, clearly and expressly filled with pop
hooks almost to the brim, but at the end of the day, they just skedaddle. Vamoose.
Melt in the air like a mirage. Every single song on here has more «intelligence»
and «depth» to it than ʽLucy In The Sky With Diamondsʼ, but Lucy is still here
with us, and Beulah are not. What the hell?..
Let us take one single song and scrutinize it,
to try and understand what's so wrong here. After the brief mood-setting intro,
the first complete, self-sufficient, and technically impeccable number is ʽA
Good Man Is Easy To Killʼ, whose lyrics deal with a car crash that involved
Kurosky's father and prompted him to explore the proverbial father/son
relationship in his art — so put this up as a plus (personal matter, adds to
the song's level of sincerity and emotional involvement, etc.). The song begins
with a loud, nasty fuzz riff, then expands with an agitated, Tull-style flute
part and vocal harmonies, then calms down and slows down to the «baroque» verse
section with strings, brass, and a pop vocal part straight out of the Beatles
textbook. Short sparkling piano bridge to the chorus — a humble plea of "give
up, give up your love / I promise it's not gonna kill ya" — and then back
to the fuzz riff / flute / vocal harmony trio again. Repeat a couple of times,
then cut to the fadeout where the brass and flutes get a little crazier and
start threatening to punch each other out before the fadeout washes them all
away.
Seems like a clever, sensible song, but something's just not fuckin' right about
it. Maybe it is the disparity between the vocal and instrumental parts — the
tenderness of the verse/chorus is in sharp conflict with the agitated nature of
the fuzz riff bits, and the two give a «phoney» feel of being spliced for no
particular reason whatsoever; there is no sense
in the song fluctuating between these two states, nor does the music hint at
any transition. Maybe it is the vocals — Kurosky cannot help it, of course, but
his singing voice, devoid of solid range or any sort of individual flavor, is
bland, and does not do justice to the potential of the vocal melody. Or maybe
it is the melody itself — take the fuzz riff, for instance, and try to compare
it with a great fuzz riff, like
ʽSatisfactionʼ, or, heck, ʽIn-A-Gadda-Da-Vidaʼ. Those ones had a bite and
menace to them, but Beulah's riff just sounds thick and dumb to me. Same with
the flute — if you are going to evoke Tull associations, why not learn more than
just two different phrases on the instrument?
It would be all too simple to say that the song
does not work properly just because Beulah are bad songwriters, but that would
be wrong. Kurosky is a pretty good songwriter — his mistake is in that he is
very far from a genius songwriter,
yet he makes music that, want it or not, intrudes directly on the turf of at
least half a dozen genius songwriters of the 1960s. Consequently, Beulah's
masterpiece is their completion of the «triumph of form over substance»
attitude — all the more ironic considering that the songs have their meanings, and reveal them to anybody who is willing to
look for them. But there are meanings and meanings, and The Coast Is Clear, being full of «literal» meanings (as in, «ʽA
Good Manʼ reflects the complex feelings that the author experienced while his
father was battling death...», etc.), has never once managed to hit me in my
soft emotional spots — from which I conclude that it has no «musical» meaning,
as such, as subjective as that harsh judgement may sound.
Still, due admiration must be expressed for all
the doggone hard work that went into making the record so diverse and
inventive. As long as I am writing this at the same time as the sweet sounds flow
out from the speakers, ʽGene Autryʼ is a dang fine pop-rocker about the disparity
between fantasy and reality (good hook — the pessimistic conclusion of
"everybody drowns, sad and lonely alright" laid out on the listener
in an optimistic manner); ʽPopular Mechanics For Loversʼ bops along with a
clever mix of joyfulness and melancholia (and the "just because he loves
you too / he would never take a bullet for you" bit might be the catchiest move on the album); ʽI'll Be Your
Lampshadeʼ, whose title is probably a subtle reference to ʽI'll Be Your
Mirrorʼ, mixes country and vaudeville in a very odd fashion; and they save
their most ambitious and anthemic brass riffs for the album closer ʽNight Is
The Day Turned Inside Outʼ to provide a suitably loud, mock-heroic,
ride-out-in-the-sunset conclusion. It's all good.
But now the album is over, and... how did it go
again? Damn, it's really irritating.
No wonder, after all, that these guys were never able to find a mass market, or
that retro-oriented art-pop in general stays so tightly glued to the indie
community. Maybe it's just that the likeliest candidate to write the best
Beatles song never written would probably be a person who's never listened to
the Beatles in the first place. Or maybe it's all much simpler, and they should
have found themselves a better vocalist. In any case, I give the album one of
those «intellectually-driven» thumbs up — for inventiveness, imagination, and
hard labor. For everything else, please refer yourself to this band's many
influences instead.
"Every single song on The Coast sounds lovely, classy, and inspiring... while it's on."
ReplyDeleteYes, that's an intruiging phenomenon. There are some more or less obscure hardrock bands I totally dig when listening: Warlord, Tredegar, Fates Warning. But I'm lucky if I can even recall little fragments of their songs - a melody here, a riff there. I thought it was because of me getting old, but apparently that's not necessarily the case.
I have to agree with the assessment of this review. I've owned this album, twice. Owned two other Beulah albums as well. Nothing ever "caught." But I will say I like "A Good Man is Easy to Kill," musically and lyrically. Having been in traction for a broken neck, I can relate to the lyrics about the halo...
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