Inside the Making of Peter Cat Recording Co.’s Bright New Album ‘Beta’

Peter Cat Recording Co. are currently on their world tour promoting the new album Beta and they might be the only band who can say some of these songs were recorded between Paris, Joshua Tree in California, New Zealand and Faridabad.

A week before kickoff, it’s about 10:30 in the morning and Peter Cat Recording Co. (PCRC)’s Suryakant Sawhney aka Lifafa, Kartik Pillai aka Jamblu, Karan Singh, Dhruv Bhola and Rohit Gupta are joining in from their different abodes. “I live in Haryana,” Pillai clarifies with a smile.

While the New Delhi-origin band had originally moved to Goa, they’re now long-distance, with Bhola, Gupta (who’d just finished up a yoga session) and Singh living near each other and Pillai and Sawhney in Delhi NCR. At one point, PCRC (and Begum, the alt act comprising Pillai, Singh and Bhola) used to jam and record music at their home in Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi. Sawhney points out that their 2016 collection of songs Transmissions was recorded there.

Pillai adds, “I mean, that was the only place at that time where we didn’t have to spend money on an hourly basis, and we didn’t have to go anywhere to jam rooms. I heard it’s an OYO [hotel] now.”

Regardless of where or how they’re recording, there’s a finesse (and at other times, the intentional graininess and fuzziness) heard on Beta that’s very much familiar. “I’d say many times our recordings are not the best version of the song we could put out. But I think it’s like a, like a ‘portrait of a time,’” Sawhney says with wide-eyed humor, referring to their 2018 global breakout album Portrait of A Time, released via French label Panache in 2018. Right from the pre-global fame albums like Sinema, Climax and Wall of Want up to that collection in 2018 that was followed up by Bismillah in 2019, there’s an in-the-room intimacy in the band’s recording and production approach.

On Beta, there’s “Connexion,” the all-out rock jam that is prefaced by a member saying “I feel like a lot of the frequencies might leave if the door’s open.” Pillai says that even though locations have changed, their process is “weirdly similar” to albums like Climax, where they set up camp at a friend’s house.

Sawhney adds, “The process is almost exactly the same. Some songs come more fully prepared. Some songs are in rougher places. There’s a lot more electronic music production because we also make electronic music. So a lot of the songs come like that now. We just upgraded the places. We are doing the same shit, basically.”

A band that composes as they go along the recording process, studios with booked slots are “literally restrictive” for a band like PCRC, as Sawhney points out. If any listener hears songs like the lead single “People Never Change” or dreamy jams like “Something About You,” there’s a flow that can rightly only be captured through a fluid meandering into what might start as just a song idea.  

Beta is mostly populated by signature lyrically downcast yet colorful tracks like “Seed” and “A Beautiful Life,” fully mournful tunes like “Just Another Love Song” but also super-bright songs like “Flowers R. Blooming,” “Foolmuse” (led by Pillai), “Control Room” (which lilts almost like it was a Lifafa track) and introspective yet somewhat empowering songs like “Suddenly,” “I Deny Me” (led by Bhola) and “21C.” The best surprise they gave fans was “People Never Change,” which opens with a wondrous flourish of Punjabi folk elements and has characteristic wit from Sawhney including “I’m an enemy of violence/Till a bullet in the heart/Is kindness.”

Sawhney says, “I feel [Beta] is more colorful [sound-wise] than Bismillah, even though Bismillah is a pretty colorful album, but this one feels more saturated in some way, and maybe the album art reflects that, or makes you think that.”

The artwork of a Chinese girl doll that’s maybe more suited to fireworks sold in India is at the center of it, designed by Singh, Sawhney and Mumbai-origin, Brooklyn-based designer/visual artist Dev Valladares. Behind this outlined doll figure (who’s clutching 100-dollar notes) is the album title emblazoned in bright pink over a red background. If you look at the background colors for even a short while, it feels hypnotizing.

Singh points out that Sawhney came across the imagery of the doll in Thailand, referring to it as “one of those things you use for Chinese New Year.” Sawhney adds, “It’s one of those weird feng shui New Year gifts they give in China. Although there’s definitely been a few Chinese people who’ve been like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ Soon enough, talk turns to ‘Made in China’ merch, if PCRC ever gets to play there.

Another item PCRC picked up that appears on Beta was the swarsangam, a combination of the tanpura and swarmandal. It’s heard on the glorious opening track “Flowers R. Blooming.” Sawhney says, “I saw this weird white hippie dude playing it on YouTube, and I thought it sounded great. It just sounded really fucking magical, actually.” Sawhney asked Bhola, who played it on the track, to pick it up. “You ever seen those old Ramayan shows where Narad Muni appears out of somewhere? There’s like, this flourish of these strings. It’s like [imitates sound] and then ‘Har Har Mahadev,’” Bhola says.

Bhola and Gupta joined the band just as Bismillah was already underway, so Beta has a lot more of their sonic fingerprints all over. There’s saxophone, clarinet and more from Gupta, while there’s a very brief violin part that made it onto “I Deny Me.” Gupta adds about his impression of the new album, “I think there was a lot of experimentation. We keep experimenting like with different instruments and stuff. So we involved some new instruments and I think there was just this general thing of trying to push towards a new sound, which is why some of the songs like ‘Control’ and ‘Flowers R. Blooming’ are quite different than the previous stuff.”

Bhola makes another sizable contribution with “I Deny Me,” an openhearted tune that came out of nowhere during a recording session in Paris. The band ribs Bhola about never finishing songs or never being happy about the material. Even with “I Deny Me,” Bhola feels they could have got a better version. He says, “I think [Sawhney] was doing some vocals and piano and I was just sitting and playing the song and then he heard it and he said, ‘Why don’t you just record this song right now?’” Sawhney adds, “Even though Bhola is not the most cheerful dude, there’s a happier energy to his playing.”

It fits in seamlessly with the sound and aesthetic of Beta, just like “Foolmuse” by Pillai. It’s the only time on the album that you don’t hear Sawhney’s distinct, 1950s-like vocal treatment. It’s an earnest, deep and charming song that goes over a few funk and groove elements that make “Foolmuse” instantly hummable. Pillai says he didn’t think too much about the songwriting and it didn’t matter how familiar it sounded. Singh points out that Pillai apparently got a message saying ‘Why did you release Begum’s track with Peter Cat?’” Pillai adds, “[Sawhney] was like, ‘How has this not been sung already? It’s the easiest chorus.” Sawhney chimes in, “The chorus felt so… feels like it already exists. It still does to me.” Pillai laughs, “When we get sued or something, we’ll let you know.”

Throughout Beta, there’s a lot that’s true to PCRC’s open-ended, interpretive lyrical style, but then there’s the very direct story on “Suddenly” about Sawhney and his mother’s lives after the passing of his father.

It’s an emotionally sweeping song, delivered with a measured stoicism that Sawhney is often known for. Drummer Singh says it has his favorite lyrics. “Because Suryakant anyways doesn’t tell [us] anything about himself. So I got to know a few things about him [by] reading the lyrics. That was cool,” Singh adds. Sawhney retorts, “What do you mean? All my lyrics are self-exposition!”

Singh admits he’s made a very broad generalization. He adds, “I know some aspects, and some aspects I get to find through the song.” Bhola chimes in and says, “But sometimes people have normal conversations and tell each other about each other.”

Regardless, “Suddenly” is bound to leave audiences moist-eyed when they play it live. Singh has an idea. “Maybe we should sell handkerchiefs!” Pillai chips in, “The ‘Suddenly’ Handkerchief. It would be expanding handkerchiefs, like you cry into it and it expands.”

Time may have been a constraint to convert that merch idea into reality, since PCRC kicked off their U.S. tour supporting Texan trio Khruangbin on Aug. 15, which was preceded by a special set to road-test the new setlist in Mumbai. The band’s manager Dhruv Singh from Pagal Haina says Khruangbin had been fans of PCRC and “made that connection.”

Spanning a total of 77 dates, this is the biggest international tour by an indie band. They’re playing new cities in the U.S. and heading to Canada for the first time (visa issues nixed that last tour plan), plus European countries like Ireland, Italy, Spain, Norway and Sweden debut shows. It gets rounded off with their India tour dates in December.

Sawhney says about the setlist, “I think we’ve made a decision between the biggest hits and songs we really like to play live, which come out better live than in recording, something like ‘Heera’ we really like playing live. Or ‘Remains.’ These are songs which I think have a different life when we play it live.”

It’s a big deal that around 14 years since the band released Sinema, they have found a global audience that’s led to multiple sold-out tours in different corners of the world. The demand certainly hasn’t ebbed with Beta coming out. As Pillai points out, they’ve been working at it for a while but “also very lucky at the same time” for their music to reach a worldwide audience.

He adds, “I remember doing the India tours and people being like, ‘Oh, you can’t drive around India and do tours.’ And then we did drive around India, do tours, and now we’re doing world tours. I try not to think about it too much. Then [there’s] too much going on in the head, you know?”

Sawhney just wishes it was slightly earlier on in their career that they got to head out on tour. Now, some of them are more family-oriented – which is the theme of Beta. He says, “It’s incredibly exhausting, physically taxing. It’s kind of nice that it happened, but I do wish it had happened at least, like, seven years ago when I wasn’t 37 years old, so I could have had a different energy. But, you know, you take what you get. I’m grateful for that.”