Poised over our menus, Miles and I debated the merits of the meatball sandwich versus the pasta special with garlic, mozzarella, arugula, and diced tomato. He opted for the meatball sandwich, which I have to say looked pretty darned good.



So, Miles, your manager tells me you're blissfully unemployed.

Miles -I've been unemployed for a couple of years. If you remain inactive, and sit on the couch a lot, and don't go out, you find that you don't have many expenses. Staring at the wall is really cheap. I'm dreadfully lazy, so it works out perfect. I have no problem with being lazy and doing nothing. I have a problem with working too hard, actually, I can't buy into that. But usually have errands I have to run, so I wander around the city. It's just that in most people's lives, an errand might take half an hour, but it just takes me all day. Like today, my one errand was to mail off a couple of CDs to Robert and Hilarie [of the Apples in Stereo], and I still haven't done it. So it's still part of my errand.
How the heck did you scrape together the many instrumentalists who play on your new album? And furthermore, how did you get them all to do what you wanted?

Miles -A lot of them were friends of friends, and I just called them up cold and asked them to help out. But because I'm not really good friends with any of them, I couldn't very well have them all come in and do this more than once or twice, so I kept having to find more violinists to finish the tracks. They weren't really ever asked to improvise, their parts were all written. I hummed the parts to our bass player, Steve, who can write musical notation and he wrote them down. And not all five violinists ever play all at once. Most of the arrangements have two violins, two cellos and two violas.

Miles -Besides the 18 other instrumentalists on the album, there's a lot of things we played ourselves. Most of the horns on the record are trumpet and are played by Bill Swan. There's all sorts of stuff on there. Live, Bill plays guitar and trumpet, and I only play guitar. Steve St. Cin plays drums, and Pat Noel guitar and keyboards, Steve La Follette plays bass, but in the studio everyone can do everything. I even play piano on the record. And whoever plays a particular instrument in a specific style best, plays it on the songs and nobody takes it personally. There are actually songs on the record that I played very little or nothing on, just because if I don't get something in three takes, I just give up and tell someone else to do it. That's just me being lazy. It makes no difference if I play it, as long as the part gets done.

Miles -No, I don't do any of that. I just hear all of it in my head, when I'm in bed or something. For instance, on "Matter Versus Space," it starts out with a drum beat, then some mariachi-type horns, and then a rocky thing with sitars later, then keyboards, guitar and reverb. It evolves in my head as I think about all day. I have a four-track but I don't really use it to flesh out ideas just because I'm too lazy. But keep in mind that a lot of things I want to do just don't work out. Like on the beginning of one song I really wanted a huge marching band, but it was just too hard to get one together. But we had it all written out.

So how do your fellow band mates fit into the writing process?

Miles -They come up with things. For instance, on one song, I knew I wanted to add a Baroque piano part, but I didn't write it. But I said to Steve, I want a part that's kind of like the baroque piano on the Beatles' "In My Life," and Steve gets on there and writes four of 'em. And I just pick one. So there's times when I have a vague vision of what I want, and I'll say, OK, I want underwater keyboard sounds here, and Pat will make underwater keyboard sounds for me.

Miles -It's kind of a fraternity - a good one though, rather than a neon-wearing, volleyball-playing fraternity.




I know you've been to the Elephant-6 complex in Denver several times. What's it like?

Miles -Just a house with a bunch of sh&t strewn about, people getting high and watching the X-files, or Space Ghost. It's really mellow.

So Elephant 6 is a collective, a complex, and a label?

Miles -All the members of the collective are on different labels, so Elephant 6 isn't a record label really. Our first record is actually the only record to come out on Elephant 6 proper, as a label. Robert and Hilarie are the heads of it, but they're also the Apples, and they're really busy. The first album sold out of its first 2000 pressings, so that's good, but it's just a matter of moving up, and Sugar Free just has more resources you need from a label to do that.

Miles -I think it's all about kindred spirits, because on the first record, we sound more like Pavement and The Velvets. It's all very lo-fi, and straight-forward, more simple. It's just me and Steve, two guitars and drums, and no bass. I think it's just a natural progression, we would have done this whether we knew of Elephant 6 or not, because everything we do goes back to the Beatles and how much they change from record to record. Like you have "Please, Please Me," and a couple of years later they're doing Revolver, which is totally different. We think that each record should be different from the last and you should keep progressing.

What will the next one be like?

Miles -We're going to go really crazy on the next one. I have half of the next record finished, not recorded, but written. The next one is going to be bigger, bigger everything. You see, we started recording on cassettes, 4-track and 8-track cassettes, so the first album is kind of lo-fi, and a bit rough, which I guess has its charm. With this record, we moved up to mid-fi and used a half-inch reel-to-reel. So we got a little more fidelity working on our side. I don't even think of it as lo-fi, I just think of it as lo-tech. We just don't have the money to have good technical equipment, and that's what it comes down to. But I want it to sound as good as it possibly can. I think it's more of an accomplishment and more fun for a band to try to squeeze all they can out of a 4-track machine, that to purposely try to make something sound worse. And even though this album was recorded on a reel-to-reel, we still didn't have very good mikes, and mikes are the most important thing. The Apples use the same kind of mikes that the Beatles used, and they just sound so rich and big. But this album's not bad for a home recording, especially considering that we did it in a room where we had to wait for bands in the rehearsal spaces next door to stop playing, and we would be like, "Go, quick! Play your part!"



Have you done much touring, and are future tours in the works?

Miles -We've done a couple of tours. One was with the Apples in Stereo a couple of years ago, which was terrific, they're some of our best friends. I adore them, I love them so much. We're doing a West Coast tour in the Spring with Ladybug Transistor, on Merge, and Of Montreal, on Bar None. They're both really good. Ladybug Transistor is actually one of my favorite bands in America. They're from Brooklyn.

So we now know lots about Beulah as a studio organism. What do you have to say about your live shows?

Miles -You really should pay attention to us when we play live, because 1) its a very cathartic experience, and 2) we are the greatest band in America, which a lot of people don't know as of yet. Oh wait, I'm sorry, we're not the greatest band in America, we're the greatest band in the world. We've gone international.


Check out their show at Noise Pop 99, and see for yourself if Beulah lives up to all this big talk. I'm betting they will.

Check out our review of Beulah's
When Your Heartstrings Break

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