In support of their recent Velocette Records release called Yoko, San Francisco-based sextet Beulah rolled through Minneapolis's 400 Bar this week. Over the course of the last five years, Beulah has been one of the most consistently creative bands on the indie circuit, thanks in part to lead singer Miles Kurosky's well-documented great attention to detail.

On Monday night, Miles proved himself to be the heart and soul of the band not only in the studio, but also on stage. Conceding that his energy level had dissipated due to deteriorating health (the flu) and exhaustion from the band's five-week tour, Kurosky came on stage with vigor and determined to make the band's supposedly final stop in Minneapolis a memorable one. Donning a t-shirt with Johnny Cash giving the bird, Kurosky engaged the audience for the duration of the set. When a woman yelled out, "I like your shirt!", Miles turned to her and said, "You want it? Come up after the show, and I'll give it to you." For the single encore, Miles entertained requests from the audience, with the caveat that the fan had to come up and sing, dance, or play tambourines or maracas. This clearly made for an entertaining conclusion.

The band's performance itself was especially noteworthy in that it struck a delicate balance between songs old and new, straight-forward and experimental. Beulah did not focus its set list entirely on the tracks from the solid new album, Yoko, though it did play several songs off the album. Instead, it mixed the 90-minute set up with songs from each album, including, from the band's first (and only) Elephant 6 release, Handsome Western States, "Disco: The Secretaries Blues" and "I Love John, She Loves Paul" (the latter of the two tracks was also the A-Side to the band's first seven-inch single, A Small Cattle Drive in a Snow Storm also released on Elephant 6).