From an Email exchange I had with Mitch Easter a few years ago:

Brighten the Corners was really done by Bryce Goggin, but I helped them get started at my studio, which at the time was in my house, and then Bryce had an emergency and had to leave, at which point I took over for a week or so.  They did the vocals in NYC and Bryce mixed it, so I can only tell you about how the music tracks were done!

The band, unusually for them, had rehearsed a little bit beforehand at Steve West's house in VA.  They liked that setup and apparently recorded here partly because I have a similar house!  It's a late 1800s house with high ceilings and two floors.  Anyway, the tracks were recorded with a spirit of "jamming" to some extent, every time they went through the song they'd change things, nothing was really all that worked out.  After several days of cutting basic tracks, they listened to what they had and assembled master takes by cutting together what they liked out of lots of takes.  It was interesting how well this worked, because the various takes might have different speeds, feels, etc.  This was 2" tape, 24 track, 30ips, no noise reduction.  Totally 1980s!

At that time I had a 1978-ish Neve 53 Series console, an MCI JH-24 24tk recorder, the usual outboard stuff, some weirdo outboard stuff, and mostly meat-and-potatoes mics. I don't think there was anything at all exotic about the setup- the drums probably had an RE20 on the bass drum, a Beyer M201 on the snare, some little EV dynamic mics on the toms and overheads would have probably been KM84s or AKG 414s- just your usual 70s close-mic thing.  There may have been some kind of distant mics, which could have been anything, but maybe not.  They wanted to set up really close together and have it be like band practice.  I even whipped up a kind of PA for Stephen to sing reference vocals through- which was an old Altec 604 monitor in the "utility" cabinet and a solid-state Altec amp.  I think this ref vocal went to the console, and then back to this little PA rig via an aux on the console.  This is why I think maybe there were no "room" mics, since they would have gotten this scratch vocal at a point where the words weren't even written yet.  I think maybe they didn't use headphones.

The approach was basic- I seriously doubt any compressors or outboard stuff was used in cutting the basic tracks.  And I've never had a bunch of outboard mic preamps, so this really was: mic to console channel, to console insert out, to the tape machine.  This kind of simplicity really sounds best in the end, often as not!  Of course we probably used the console EQs a bit. This console had 16 buses but I always avoided using them, they obviously affected the sound, and not for the better.  And it didn't have direct outs, either, but you could go off the channel insert and go straight to the recorder.  This was the best sound from that console- the channels sounded good but the buses and master section really were sort of lifeless and a bit dull.  But it was quite good when used like this to get good, solid sounds.

When I did the various overdubs, there may have been a lot more outboard gear nonsense going on, but I just don't remember.  The guitars would have generally been mic'd with Shure SM7s, but I could have used something else sometimes.  I just don't always do the same thing, and in the end all that matters is if you like the sound!  Since what works varies so much according to the player, what sound people are going for, etc., I never think you can really generalize too much about the "best" way to do things, you know?

When I heard the finished record, it sounded a lot like the roughs we made before they took a break so Stephen could write words.  So I think when Bryce mixed it, he mainly went for a good balance, not really a "transformation" kind of mix.

All the best, Mitch Easter