Beulah: When Your Heartstrings Break : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Beulah treat songs as unobtrusive frames for dazzling arrangements that evoke their home state of California's Summer of Love. The tunes on their second album barely stick, but they're so dense with yummy, homemade sonic details that it takes a while to notice. Oohing like the Beach Boys (suggested drinking game: spot the Endless Summer quotes) and pulsing like the Velvet Underground, Beulah are augmented here by friends playing strings, horns, accordions, buzzy old organs and hand claps - twenty-three musicians in all. Mostly recorded in Beulah's practice space and mixed into vintage-AM-radio chewiness by the Apples in Stereo's Robert Schneider, When Your Heartstrings Break works best when the band focuses on a single melodic or lyrical idea long enough to let it build some steam. On the album's highlight, "Emma Blowgun's Last Stand," Beulah swirl new instruments into a simple, percolating groove for almost three minutes before singer Miles Kurosky opens his mouth and resurrects Al Jardine's casual cool. (RS 812)

DOUGLAS WOLK