The San Francisco branch of the Elephant 6 Collective creates crafty and precise psych-pop songs a la the Beach Boys' celebrated Pet Sounds album. The winsome melodies will charm your socks off.
Break out the kaleidoscope and dig your toes into the shag carpet as
Beulah transmits the sound of the
Elephant Six Collective. Like their brethren
The Olivia Tremor Control,
The Apples in Stereo,
Neutral Milk Hotel, and
Elf Power,
Beulah is a trippy pop explosion drawing influence from albums such as
The Beatles' Revolver and
The Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society.
Beulah adds a melee of percussion, strings, horns, and a ton of other instruments to most of their songs without sacrificing the lovely melodies.
Beulah is a necessity for fans of the sixties pop and/or THC.
"If We Can Land a Man on the Moon Surely I Can Win Your Heart" is from the 1999
Sugar Free Records album
When Your Heartstrings Break. "My Horoscope Said It Would Be a Bad Year" is from the 1998
Inbred: Sounds of the San Joaquin Valley compilation on
Future Farmer.
In 2001,
Beulah returned with its first new material in two years, in the form of their
The Coast Is Never Clear release on
Velocette. (For a chance to win
The Coast Is Never Clear-related goodies, click
here.) It features plenty of their patented horn-happy pop rave-ups and a few loungy piano-laced numbers, with the ever-so-slightly countrified "Gravity's Bringing Us Down" falling somewhere in between.
