Pitchfork

You try to be a good person, you really do. You have a vision. You're not like everyone else, no; you always follow through, you go the extra mile, you tip the extra dollar. You have goals. You have pride. You analyze, plan, and apply. You have faith. You stick to your guns and never let words hurt you. You're an excellent listener and you can always keep a secret. Nothing can touch you. Hell, you've pretty much got it all figured out. And then one day, out of the blue, a switch is flipped; life hands you your ass and you discover you're just as vulnerable and incompetent as the guy who used to live above you who ate cigarettes at every meal and twice trapped and tried to ransom a neighborhood dog for rent money.

Why? Because even if you live in a bubble reciting Bible verses, wearing a Kevlar vest and an oxygen mask inside a bomb shelter beneath the Pentagon, there's still something to which you'll never be immune: man's inherent fallibility. The moment Eve handed Adam that apple we were screwed. Now all it takes is a little push and we're on our way, no matter how straight a line we walk. We're all born into paradise (some of us stay longer than others), and whether the process is gradual or instantaneous, change is imminent. Nothing lasts forever. With Yoko, change has come, and come swiftly, for better and for worse. Thus, with final product in hand and half an apple missing, the question presents itself: So what's her name?

Perhaps I'd be better served asking the question again in the plural, as nearly every member of Beulah is said to have parted ways with wives or long-time girlfriends since the recording of their last album (including the third of the group involved in a lineup change), but the query is nonetheless justified. Since 1997, over the course of three albums, Beulah have unabashedly offered up a congruous library of sunny, debonair guitar-pop. Employing trademark sanguine arrangements of horns, strings and woodwinds, the tone was at best ironic, sometimes paradoxically sentimental, but always uplifting, impulsive and fresh-faced. No more. Yoko is a wash of sentiment, desire, and emotional fragility, and it's the first determined step outside of the band's garden of lush, fertile pop-craftsmanship.

Look no further than to the barren, minimalist cover work, where previously there existed nods to serene, natural elements. Check the album title. Acronym for the third track ("You're Only King Once") or not, gender relations are suspect. To be fair, I'd be remiss not to admit a share of artistic reinvention into the mix, but Yoko represents a shift in consciousness that so enticingly mirrors post-Lapsarian change, it's impossible to resist.

To begin, the songs exude a newly developed arresting self-consciousness. Everything is tentative and intricately wrought, perhaps in an overly accommodating response to fears of linearity. This fashionable awareness lends an almost palpable weight to the sound. It succeeds in adding depth and texture to the album, but sometimes overshoots the mark. With a clichéd garage-rock dynamic at its heart, "My Side of the City" caters directly to the Spoon-fed rock chic, while "Landslide Baby" exhibits a lack of restraint with its misplaced bridge delivery of "'Cause you're scared and you're weak and you don't give a fuck about me/ And I do believe that you hate yourself." Essentially, Beulah just try too hard and lack moderation in their extremes. Nearly every song feels like the band is carefully exercising a right of indulgence.

Lyrically, Yoko is permeated with cynicism, a telltale sign of mortality. Emotionally, currents of romantic melancholy and cynical disenchantment run throughout. Lead singer Miles Kurosky yearns and languishes, implores and informs. "Standing alone at the gate/ She's late/ She's miles above," from "Hovering", and similar revelations, pepper the album with a pleading despondency-- but one that's executed without any sense of spontaneity. "Fooled with the Wrong Guy" draws the connection between maudlin and mandolin, but misses the mark by turns too Travis and is bogged down with excess lethargy. It's one of several moments where Beulah actually mope.

Some songs, however, run the gauntlet and emerge with more character and confidence. "A Man Like Me", the opening cut, initially sounds like a sullen, purebred Spoon/Beulah alloy, as do a teeming handful of moments here, with Kurosky taking on a more moody, jaded vocal approach before choppy guitar cuts in over spacious keys and indie-thrift bass. From there, the song jumps up and down, restless and unwieldy, showcasing one of the album's finest melodies and succeeding despite such a calculated dynamic.

A hefty portion of Yoko's fortunes could rightfully be attributed to the flawless production. Without horns and hoards of background melody, a few songs are given room to wander within the sonic landscape. Intro and outro arrangements a la Yankee Hotel Foxtrot permeate the record, adding texture. Especially representative of this is the closing track, "Wipe Those Prints and Run", which teases, taunts, and stands its ground where previous Beulah tracks would officiously cater to the listener. The new textures serve the band's sound accordingly, and enable them to explore new compositional directions while retaining a degree of continuity earlier albums missed. The band navigates a maze of intent amidst this freedom of motion, and for at least a moment in each song, they stumble onto something enlightening-- something familiar, something classifiably Beulah.

Mortally self-conscious, repentant and quixotic, Yoko has a vision. Instead of a full-out rollicking, springy affair, they offer a sinusoidal ride through sentiment-- their first. At its heart, this record is a statement of regret with a bleak view of redemption, but its grand tone hints at something more universal, and opens up an endless landscape of possibility. Sometimes change is good-- that is, so long as it's still open to change.