Dave Gimenez's equally dulcet vocals conjure the conspiratorial tone of Dashboard Confessional, the peppy enthusiasm of Jimmy Eat World's Jim Adkins, and the wistful gushing of Joe Pernice, giving lilting song-poems about the usual love and regret a velvet touch. Mae's lyrics, simultaneously secular and spiritual, and their unabashedly earnest choruses closely resemble those of another band often misunderstood during its infancy -- U2. Like the best parts of the Irish rockers' early 1980s output, Beautiful's emotion is innocent and pure, lacking artifice, but brimming with irresistible sentiment.