Artist	Song
Beulah	I Love John, She Loves Paul
Beulah	Maroon Bible
Beulah	Lay Low For The Letdown
Beulah	Disco: The Secretaries Blues
Beulah	Shotgun Dedication
Beulah	Dig The Subatomic Holdout #2
Beulah	Score From Augusta
Beulah	Sunday Under Glass
Beulah	Matter Vs. Space
Beulah	Emma Blowgun's Last Stand
Beulah	Ballad Of The Lonely Argonaut
Beulah	Warmer
Beulah	If We Can Land A Man On The Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart
Beulah	Hello Resolven
Beulah	A Good Man Is Easy To Kill
Beulah	Gene Autry
Beulah	Silver Lining
Beulah	Popular Mechanics For Lovers
Beulah	Gravity's Bringing Us Down
Beulah	Cruel Minor Change
Beulah	Landslide Baby
Beulah	My Side Of The City
Beulah	Fooled With The Wrong Guy
Beulah	Don't Forget To Breathe

Comment:

I'd originally made a split-mix, a few years back, half Beulah and half Minders (a like-minded act), but decided it was time to let these guys stand on their own. For those who blinked quickly and missed 'em, Beulah were a fantastic and painfully underappreciated San Francisco-based indie pop band in the mid-90's to early 00's, part of the Elephant 6 retro-pop collective (at least initially, with Apples in Stereo frontman Rob Schneider producing their first album). This is a straight chronological run through their 4 albums, each of which showed amazing and steady growth. Their 1997 debut, notwithstanding the mix's lead-off track, owed less to the Beatles than to alt. rockers like Superchunk and Pavement, though there was a bit of a 60s garage band sound to it as well. Lo-fi and thin, but a handful of distinctive tracks. For the 1999 follow-up, the wonderful When Your Heartstrings Break, the Beatles (and Beach Boys) fixation became readily apparent, with much denser instrumentation and more sophisticated melodies and structures. Unbelievably catchy, and would have been a career high if not for 2001's The Coast Is Never Clear, which managed to raise the bar even further. Just as many drop-dead off-kilter baroque pop songs, with an even more captivating studio sheen (which is not to say it was overly commercial by any stretch. A studio wonk's dream. Alas, their 2003 swan song, Yoko, took things one step too far, with the overly busy production and song structure distracting from the songs, and catchy hooks at times taking a back seat to musical cleverness. Still, a few more fine songs (if none quite as unforgettable as the highlights of the previous two albums), and tempers the pop with a dose of melancholy (as over half the band was apparently going through divorces and break-ups at the time).
Frontman Miles Kurosky has been talking about a solo album for some time, but apparently has had some health problems. Hoping he gets back on his feet and finishes it up (though I have no idea what I could cut from this to make room for more tracks).
Incidentally, the photo here (an official band promo) was shot in front of the building where I work (the shiny corporate-looking one in the background, not the small brown building in front). Neat.

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