Beulah started out as a bedroom project, singer and main songwriter Miles Kurosky and multi- instrumentalist Bill Swan nestled in Kurosky's apartment working out three-minute pop nuggets — as inspired by the Beatles and power pop architects like Badfinger and the Small Faces as they were by mid-'90s indie folks like Pavement and the Apples in Stereo. Lead Apple Robert Schneider even lent a hand on their early recordings, lending a mixer's hand and luring the group into the lo-fi hipper-than-thou domain of the Elephant 6 Recording Group.
But at the tail end of the '90s, it became clear than Kurosky's sights were set higher than love from a bunch of scruffy horn-rimmers. Signing to the semi-major Capricorn label (home to artists like 311), the group, now grown to 6 members, suddenly had a realistic budget for their records. And in the fading glow of their internationally (though still critically, not fanatically) acclaimed When Your Heartstrings Break LP, the next record looms large. You get the sense talking to them that it has to sound clean enough to break through the glass ceiling of NME and college radio, but still retain enough bite and originality to avoid copping to perceived consumer demand. Beyond that, Kurosky, fresh from a stay in Japan and, from the sounds of it, a bitter break-up with his gal, is determined not to repeat himself.
"I remember we all sat down before I left for Japan, and I said, 'I'm going to leave you tapes. I want everybody's individual voices, I want you just to figure shit out on your own.'" Kurosky explains, sitting tensely (he always seems on the edge of jumping up and either throwing a fit or launching into song) in Tiny Telephone, where the band are finishing mixes for the record. "On the last record more than this one, by far, on the harp strings I came in and said, 'Here's the string line, here's the horn line, here's this, this and this,' and maybe a couple times somebody would come up with a couple lines here and there. But for the most part it was me, and I think a lot of times people felt like, 'Oh, okay. Miles knows what he wants and I won't even bother with it.'"
"On this one I said, because I found myself repeating myself, I said, 'I don't want to do this again, the same string lines and the same horn lines, I want you guys to do it.' And if you listen to what Beagle [Bill Evans] wrote and what Swanney [Bill Swan] wrote, and Pat [Noel], they're so different, they all sort of worked."
The sound of this collaborative recording style becomes apparent when you hear any of the new songs, although they all sound like trademark Beulah — gamboling verses, with instrumental textures ranging from simple indie guitar to horns, that lead into anthemic choruses, melody at the forefront. But let Kurosky explain it: "A couple songs on here go from a Curtis Mayfield sort of soul thing that Swanney wrote, into like a sort of skronky garage guitar thing that Stevie wrote into like a spacey Moog thing that Beagle wrote, and on and on. It's crazy like that and it was intentional. I think this record will be better in that way and won't sound as one-dimensional. It won't sound so Kurosky, it'll sound more Beulah."
Swan stayed true to Kurosky's wishes, as did the rest of the band, cobbling together their parts over tapes sent from Japan. "When he was gone, we all had our own tapes and did it on our own. None of us ever got together to try and figure it out," says Swan. "Five months later we were like, 'Oh hey, nice to see you again.'"
On the LP's last song (the group doesn't have the running order set yet, but they know which songs come first and last — these were two of the six songs I heard in the studio), "The Night Is The Day Turned Inside Out" (alternately titled "Slow"), string sounds created by mellotron and chamberlin analog tape loops highlight a sad, orchestrated tune. But even the song's 5 guitars played at once don't create a mishmash of too many separate tracks, according to Kurosky.
"There are more tracks, but at the same time it doesn't sound like more, because I think we use space a little better in some places. Some things are actually a little more organic I think."
On the album's first song, "A Good Man Is Easy To Kill" — Kurosky's great with titles, but prepare yourself for a hell of a time trying to figure out what they have to do with the song, exactly — low, distorted guitar opens the tune, leading into Jethro Tull-ish flute (that doesn't sound annoying), then straight into their signature "ba-ba-ba" chorus. Toss in the only real strings on the record and it's a sprightly, marvelous opener.
But the path to these final songs was roundabout — it wasn't until all the disparate instrumental pieces were assembled that Kurosky finally put together the vocal harmonies and lyrics. "He's the only guy that I've ever worked with that saves singing and the lyrics till it's almost too late," laughs Swan.
"Which is kind of stupid," interrupts Kurosky, "because you lose your voice. But then again, if we didn't keep stupid, you know, we are stupid, so we're continuing in this manner. If we did things in a logical, smart, proficient way, it just wouldn't be Beulah. So, [engineer] John [Croslin]'s learning it in a different way, and I think he's going to be working in a more stupid manner in the next couple months."
Still, as the group introduces the concept of "Stupid Recording" into Croslin's deep production lexicon, Croslin's been introducing the concept of hands-free recording to the group.
"I think we've been a lot less stressed on this record than we've ever been before," explains Kurosky, "mainly because if something goes wrong we just assume that somebody else will fix it. Whereas before, we ran around like fucking chickens with our heads cut off because we didn't know how to fix it. We were just scared that we could never finish anything. This time around we're like, 'Screw it.' We have twice the machine for reasons unknown to any of us. I think we wish we could spend another six months in here really and just keep fiddling around. Maybe we don't really, but maybe we do, I don't know."
"It's comfortable," asserts Swan.
"It is comfortable," says Kurosky. "Look, we have a couch for Christ's sake."
The Making of Beulah's "When Your Heartstrings Break" by Michael Brannan
Tell me about the gear used to record When Your Heartstrings Break.
BS: We basically used a 16-track Tascam 1/2" MSR-16 and we uhh... you're gonna laugh at this, we used a Fostex model 450 16-channel board I bought for two hundred bucks.
I won't laugh at that.
BS: Somebody out there will.
Maybe somebody who knows what they're doing will!
BS: Yeah. And then we used a DBX 166 compressor, and we used that a lot. Vocals... pretty much everything. The best mics that we used were a CAD E100, it's a condenser mic, and an AudioTechnica 4033. And then we used Shure SM57s & 58s. We recorded most everything with the 4033, most of the exotic instruments w/ the 4033 & the CAD E100. The tape was Quantegy 456.
Did you use any mic preamps?
BS: Nope, directly into the Fostex. Well, I guess we used the compressor as a sort of preamp.
Tell me about your recording process.
