The summer of 2002 was one of the best summers of my life. I had just completed my junior year of High School and felt fairly well-adjusted to life in Florida. Near the end of the school year, I attended a party at the home of a girl I had been dating; while she spent the majority of the event with her prior-boyfriend, I became engrossed in political, religious and music discussions with a friend of hers whom I had not previously been introduced to. By the next morning, we had casually decided to call it quits and my ideal summer with my new friend Cari had begun.
We spent nearly every day together talking about music, watching movies and engaging in other carefree activities too numerous to recall. We even ended up forming a band called The Aerodynamics whose main achievement was the mastery of a raw piano, bass and guitar cover of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. The Coast is Never Clear by Beulah is inextricably fated to soundtrack the memories of this part of my life and for that, I could not be more fortunate.
I was a follower of the Elephant 6 Collective and sought out any release which was associated with their sound. Beulah was a band which was frequently championed by Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo and so it was inevitable that I would eventually end up owning some of their records.
I was making my way towards an afternoon spent roller skating on the campus of an empty elementary school with Cari when I stopped by Bradenton’s local independent record store, Boogie Woogie (which tragically is now closed), and picked up a copy of The Coast is Never Clear: my first Beulah album.
The opening song, “Hello Resolven”, yawns and stretches as it climbs out of bed to greet the summer sun which explodes out of the second track “A Good Man is Easy to Kill”. There are few experiences more rewarding than driving through the Florida summer sun with an album which perfectly matches the atmosphere. The Coast is Never Clear is one of the most sun-drenched albums I have ever owned: filled with perfect vocal harmonies, electric basslines, horn sections, keyboards and all the little instrumental flourishes which add up into the perfect pop song. This perfect pop song can be found 12 times on The Coast is Never Clear. There are no throw-away tracks.
My friend Evan (yes, the Evan who writes for this site) came to visit from New Jersey and he attended a party with Cari and I at the home of one of our friends. On the way to the party we listened to “What Will You Do When Your Suntan Fades?”. During the event, while everyone socialized, Evan wandered over to the piano which was set up in the living room and began to play long wandering melodies which I had never heard before that party and have never heard again since. We then watched the first half of The Royal Tenenbaums for the first time and on the way home listened to “Popular Mechanics for Lovers”, a song which included the lyric “I heard he wrote you a song, well so what? Some guy wrote 69 and 1 just ain’t enough.” This introduced me to the album 69 Love Songs by the magnetic fields (though I did not really listen to the album until years later).
Intrigued by what I was hearing, I began to research Beulah on the internet. I read accounts of Miles Kurosky delaying album releases in pursuit of a perfect sound which he heard inside his head. These stories romanticized the band and allowed easy comparisons to such luminaries as Brian Wilson and Kevin Shields. As I heard more of their music, specifically the album “When Your Heartstrings Break”, (destined to become my favorite of their records), these comparisons became hard to deny. Beulah was a talented band which deserves to be remembered as one of the great indie-hall-of-famers.
After the summer ended, Cari and I were busy with our separate activities in school and we were unable to remain as close as we had been. We never dated or had a big fight, we just went our separate ways. I will always look back fondly on that summer and you can bet that Beulah will always be playing when I do.
