It’s hard to believe it’s been over five years since I was at Beulah’s final concert. I almost missed that train into the city and didn’t see the show at all, but I slid just inside the closing train doors at the last second and paid the exorbitant on-board ticket fee gladly, getting to the Battery Park just in time. It was a keystone moment in my then-burgeoning hipster lifestyle. I only accept the passage of time by acknowledging how much has changed in the world since that concert. George W. Bush finally won a presidential election by capturing Saddam Hussein, both Family Guy and Futurama were brought back from the land of dead television programs, and Stephen Colbert got his own tv show, book and Grammy, as well as being namedropped several times by America’s new *gasp* African-American president. Indeed, we’ve come a long way in a few short years…
And so here we are, after years of teasing and hinting, Beulah mastermind Miles Kurosky has finally released his debut solo album. It has been a slow and exacting process, bringing to mind the rumors of obsessive perfectionism during Beulah’s The Coast Is Never Clear sessions. What does Miles sound like as a “solo artist”? Are the results worth the excruciating wait?
Not exactly…
As expected, the orchestration is impeccable. Soundscapes are lush, with absolutely the perfect implementations of strings, horns, choral vocals, brushed drums, hand claps, twangy electric guitar, vibraslaps and just about everything else in the catalogue. Indeed, the music is as grand as we’ve come to hope and expect from Kurosky. It’s the content that many fans will find lacking.
Beulah’s output was largely personal and confessional, even if that meant nearly half of their material screamed “we’re breaking up really soon.” In what has become a standard move for newly solo songwriters, the tracks on The Desert of Shallow Effects take a turn towards the troubadour, the storyteller, the first-person omniscient. It’s a noble pursuit as a songwriter to attempt to craft such tales for an audience, but frankly Kurosky hasn’t flexed those muscles as well as the self-deprecating slander of his youth.
The lyrics are still undeniably strong. “How silver-sweet: A voice that makes the heavens drowsy and weak makes no sound for me. It’s an empty vessel, lost at sea. Old Hollywood could not dream up a tale so tragic…” Miles croons in “She Was My Dresden”. “He first did drugs in ’84. He’s never been the same as before. It’s the fault of the suburbs, prog-rock and his mom. She still calls him all the time to see if he’s failing…” in “Dead Language Blues”. Overall, though, The Desert of Shallow Effects feels like a less complete effort than any of Beulah’s work. Nowhere near as dour as Yoko, but more of a sad bedroom version of The Coast Is Never Clear on account of the grandiose instrumentation. Having essentially written a folk album in the trappings of indie-pop, I can’t help but wonder how these songs would hold up without all that wonderful ensemble soundtrack behind Kurosky’s voice.
Ultimately The Desert of Shallow Effects feels like the bridge album between the end of Beulah and the start of Miles’s proper solo career. An excellent entry point for new fans, but surely a disappointment for those of us waiting years to hear what a man like he had up his sleeves for so long.
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