Miles Kurosky

The former Beulah frontman overcomes illness and bad luck to release his debut solo album.

[RECOVERY ROCK] In the six years since his beloved indie pop band Beulah split up, Miles Kurosky has been through a lot. He married his girlfriend. He had two surgeries on his shoulder, where eight screws were inserted to repair a torn rotator cuff and cartilage injury—leaving him unable to strum a guitar. He was diagnosed with an intestinal disease and had two more surgeries on his kidneys. And through it all, he recorded an album.

"I remember being in the hospital and being in such pain that if the nurse came by and said, 'I'm going to shoot you up with heroin and put you out of your misery,' I would have said, 'Sure, do it,'" Kurosky says. "I had to do a lot of self-evaluation."

That reflection is easy to hear on The Desert of Shallow Effects, Kurosky's debut solo album and first set of recorded material since Beulah's 2003 swan song, Yoko. The first thing Kurosky sings on opener "Notes From the Polish Underground" is "my limbs have failed me again." The song gradually shifts the focus to his grandfather, a pilot in the Polish Air Force during World War II. The album's other tracks deal with the concept of science vs. nature ("An Apple For an Apple"), failed relationships, and, on "Dead Language Blues," the difficulty in describing a frustrating few years in words.

"It's almost a sense of impotence, not having your body work right," he says. "So I decided to look back on everything—my friendships; the loves of my life; my family; things that went wrong. I just tried to make it as poetic as possible."

It helps that the songs on Shallow Effects are just as catchy and jubilant as anything Beulah ever wrote. Kurosky confesses that many of the songs were started when he was in the band, and even though the record has his name on the cover, it still features the work over 25 musicians, including members of Beulah.

Recording began in the summer of 2006 in Arizona and continued in Oakland, Los Angeles and Portland, where Kurosky and his wife moved in 2008. Though the record is made up of standard pop songs, it's fleshed out with lush arrangements featuring everything from autoharp and oboe to Farfisa organ. He spent as much of his time subtracting orchestral elements as he spent adding them.

"I wanted to make a record that was a little more raw, had more energy and chaos and was more human," Kurosky says. "Everything I do now is with this sort of cautious optimism, but I'm happy with how it sounds."

SEE IT: The Desert of Shallow Effects is out Tuesday, March 9. Kurosky plays the Doug Fir on Friday, April 9.

WWeek 2015