The Microphones : Any Good?

Well I was half kidding about Wind's Poem generating all of the new interest, but it does seem to sound like a return to the studio experimentation and instrumentation he was known for as The Microphones. Most (not all) of the Mount Eerie material to me is just mildly interesting acoustic songs that float right out the window. The interest he has in sounds on the Microphones albums really give them character.

Plus, when I revived the thread on July 3 it really didn't last long again, so thats why I connected it now to Wind's Poem.

((((((d-_-b))))))

still love these guys

Even if all he'd ever recorded was "The Pull," he'd still rank with me.

http://i52.tinypic.com/s29tw0.jpg

just two lonely guys thinking about things

lol is there any context for that?

not really...just saw it posted elsewhere and it made me lol!

lmao

coupeville is a little-assed town 25 mi south of anacortes. fwiw.

oh jeez thank you i could not read the sign

this rules:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdCNPEeGkgo

favorite thing he's done in a really long time

(((d-_-b)))

this rules

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdCNPEeGkgo

How is the whole album? Definitely like this track and one other a lot.

I believe it's the best album he did since the Glow pt 2. Probably my album of the year.

Clear moon? I ended but getting it- very solid... Perhaps I'll get ocean roar at some point or even winds poem.

You'd think with the increasing hipness of black metal that more indie types would be firting with those textures, but apparently not. Anyway, this last string of records has been uniformly great.

wellll he sorta did did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtuCP1ExC_I

oh nvm i see what you're sayin

pointless post 40824 of 73201: i've really enjoyed the LPs he's been putting out since Wind's Poem. tbh i thought he was pretty much on the downswing after 2003's mount eerie (the last microphones LP). The unique production that had once helped to mask some of the more mediocre songs in his first phase wasn't enough to save the weak underlying songs of No Flashlight. after that, he briefly ditched the production altogether (which i thought was like cutting off his own legs) and many of his recordings were just raw acoustic guitar and his voice. and...it kinda sucked! his lyrics have always tended toward the wide-eyed twee innocent, but what was enveloped in psychedelic folk became uncomfortable to listen to when stripped down to Dude in the Corner of the Room with a Guitar mode. lyrics that once sounded full of wonder suddenly sounded like self-help tracts when presented in Dude in the Corner of the Room with a Guitar mode (worst offender, Don't Smoke, literally a song telling people not to smoke that ends "There's no punishment, only knowing what to do, no excuses, the time is now, do not wait; go, improve yourself right now"). suddenly he was presenting answers, when he was always at his best asking questions, or just being lost, like in The Glow Pt II's "Map": "there's no flesh, there's no fingers in my hair, i see a tunnel / we built walls, tall and solid between the treasure and the shovel". 2008's Dawn, featuring acoustic recordings of a bunch of songs he wrote in rural Norway while pulling a proto-Bon Iver (ewwww) in 2003 after a breakup, exemplified the problem. The wonder was gone, and what was left sounded almost...cranky!

of course, looking back at his catalog from 2004-2008, i see abundant evidence that he was recording all sorts of stuff that was different than stripped down guitar+voice. but having ravenously snagged these recordings as they were released at the time, i remember that they sounded more like one-offs and novelties than new directions. 2005's Singers was just a big choir singing a bunch of his songs, and veered uncomfortably close to an acoustic Polyphonic Spree recording session. Eleven Old Songs of Mount Eerie, also from 2005, featured him butchering every song with an old Casio, and it is uniformly terrible.

when he started releasing his black-metal tinged recordings (2007's Mount Eerie pts 6 and 7 (a 10" that came with an expensive photobook that no one bought), 2008's Black Wooden Ceiling Opening, another 10"), i took it as another pastiche. but he's stuck with it, and particularly in his twin LPs from 2012 its influence is apparent in the composition of his music, gliding and patient.

anyway, go mount eerie

I think that's pretty otm. I think around the time of No Flashlight he had a Bob Pollard-esque epiphany that he had a decent-sized fanbase of the will-buy-literally-anything-with-his-name-on-it variety and he cashed the fuck in. There's a lot of dreadful stuff in that time period. But yeah, these last couple records have been headed in the right direction. Clear Moon is my favorite since Mount Eerie.

Z S otm, but what do you make of Lost Wisdom?

I got heavily into The Microphones in about 2004 and started buying the Mount Eerie stuff that came out shortly afterwards. I'll still stick up for No Flashlight (and I even think Eleven Songs has some merit) but I soon realised there was no point trying to track down everything he put out and lost interest for a few years. Lost Wisdom was really great though, probably my favourite of his albums after The Glow Pt. 2. I also found that Dawn thing quite handy as it meant finally having properly-recorded versions of things like 'Great Ghosts' (I only bought the download though, not the fancy limited edition book). Of this year's releases, I thought Clear Moon was great but I couldn't get into the latest one at all. I think I'm back to being a fan though.

I agree with you Z S. I think it's kind of too bad, too, cause some of my favourite Elvrum songs are from his uh 'Rose Period'... "I say no", for example, I love that song. (Hate the recording of it but loved hearing it live a couple times)

van horn street, i thought lost wisdom was ok, and i know some microphone megastans who love it, but i don't really listen to it much. to me it was kind of like a bandaid (julie doiron's awesome voice) but with the same underlying issues (quiet, acoustic arrangements that never really go anywhere, repetition that seems more the product of a lack of ideas rather than a choice).

and of course, i have no problem with him performing stripped down acoustic songs. the problem is that he had done it before, and so much better. "woolly mammoth's absence", for example (see my copy+paste below). or "headless horseman" from the glow, pt 2. but while the "headless horseman" stood out because it was so quiet and untreated and clear, sequenced between the saxophone mayhem of "the moon" and the monolithic piano chord echoes of "my roots are strong and deep", the songs of Lost Wisdom are flat and consistent. it seemed like a positive step at the time because it didn't contain any obvious clunkers,and doiron's voice is a pleasure to listen to, but when i listen to it now it just sounds like antidepressants, the lows and highs both removed.

Also, just in case you missed in, this is a must:

http://www.archive.org/details/SevenNewSongsofMountEerie

This was some mega rare (200 copies only, I think) release that he put out soon after he switched to the Mount Eerie moniker, and it has some of his very best songs. I guess he got sick of watching the collector-fetish thing happen on eBay, so he put the mp3s up on archive.org for free. Although, having free access to the songs on archive didn't really dampen the price of the original release, which goes for a shit ton of money whenever it shows up on eBay.

Anyway, "Wooly Mammoth's Absence" is one of the very best songs of his Mount Eerie years, and the others are fan favorites as well.

― ZS69 (Z S), Saturday, August 22, 2009 5:44 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so I got Clear Moon from emusic sometime last year and never got around to playing it until I ran across somebody posting lyrics somewhere and I listened to it last night and tonight - I haven't really paid att'n to what Phil's been up to in ages, I loved It Was Hot, We Stayed In the Water and The Glow, Pt. 2 but I sort of just didn't keep up - I would hear things here or there that didn't hold me. Clear Moon strikes me as a very, very solid album with some really, really good lyrics and its overall effect is weighty and awesome imo.

yeah, it's pretty great! i enjoyed it the first time, and i like it more and appreciate new things about it every time i listen to it. did you grab Ocean Roar as well?

I didn't, no. I have emusic and Clear Music happened to be on the front page one day and I thought "wow, at one point I was really into the Microphones, I should see what dude is up to." I'm always more interested in how he can meld his sonic vision with his songwriting instinct - when he gets into indie-dub territory I can dig it but I don't feel super compelled to hunt it down.

man, people who really dig the vibe Phil Elverum was into in the earlier parts of the 2000s really really need to check out Wyrd Visions' Half-Eaten Guitar, which was apparently originally released in 2006. Phil reissued it on his label (PW Elverum & Sun). it sounds out of time. it makes sense as a 2014 release i guess, but a good chunk of it sounds like john fahey on a loop (meant in the best possible way). it manages to evoke the spirit of Phil's best work without sounding imitative at all. 'Bog Lord' is just a hell of a composition, very bizarrely natural sounding, and by the end when he's spelling out the name of his band it seems like the only possible way to end the song. i know i'm making it sound terrible but i love it.

the first 20 seconds of bog lord sound like it's going to be some twee bullshit and then the backing accordion and guitar accompaniment that enter lift the curtain on some disturbing shit

bullshit --> disturbing shit

i apologize for my incoherency but it's worth your time

also since i'm on an annoying roll i'll just add that fans of six organs of admittance would almost certainly appreciate the closing track on this, 'Air-Conditioning'

sounds like john fahey on a loop

you've got my attention. you have lots of good thoughts on phil elverum itt

ha, glad you think so! but every time i post itt i'm off the edge wine drunk. case in point, i'm pretty sure my post from may 24 2012 had no awareness of my may 4 2012 post

lol, hadn't spotted that. BOG LORD is really strange, this is nothing like microphones/mount eerie or really anything else i've heard

i agree that it sounds really strange, but what's great about the album is that by the time you get to it (it's the 4th track out of 5 longish songs) it makes sense. the album is wonderful, and it brings back the great feeling of the microphones material in that you want to introduce people to it but somehow no single song makes sense without the context of the rest of the album.

yeah listening to sigill I have decided I love this. looping chants make it feel ancient & the acoustic guitar sounds so heavy

i wish i could get people that are into modern psychedelic heavy loop music to listen to this, but i don't think the microphones thread is the proper channel to do it

I like the Microphones. I will listen to it soon!

xp what are you thinking of re: 'modern psychedelic heavy loop music' ?

oh, that's probably the wine talking - especially the 'loop' part, and er the 'modern' part - but i guess i'm just thinking of fans of stuff like boris and ben chasny loop and maybe growing

gotcha, and yeah phil elverum is definitely outside or any obv existant scene & kind of ignored like all true mumblers

i wish i had a really good definition and examples of modern psychedelic heavy loop music because that sounds like my dream station

shall we have a thread or is there no point?

How about the band Loop? Like, duh.

i would guess that there's no point, but i'm of the floaty opinion that there is no point to pretty much anything. also, he only has this one release and there doesn't appear to be anything else at all!

How about the band Loop? Like, duh.

yeah, i mentioned them a few posts above but forgot to add a comma after chasny!

they just had a baby...good god

Oh, that's awful. Wow. Thank you for sharing, I'll pass that along.

She didn't make it :(

https://www.gofundme.com/elverum?viewupdates=1&utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email&utm_content=cta_button&utm_campaign=upd_n

No

So sad. Everyone should go to the site and donate.

that's really crushing

Phil's eulogy is heartbreaking.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1160212074020727&id=100000958379080

http://68.media.tumblr.com/60b453bbd2c5df002036ce843945c68d/tumblr_oizc044YbN1rx4hiao2_1280.jpg

"they carry all of my releases year-round, not counting the forthcoming album containing these new songs."

good to see him making music and playing out again, although i don't know how he's doing it.

whoops: full size image at http://pwelverumandsun.tumblr.com/ if that's too small

I hope he knows everyone is rooting for him

Would love to go to this..I'm in Vancouver, not too far...

Saw Phil several years back when he first started out as Mount Eerie in a overly hot non air conditioned room. He would play guitar for a few songs, jump on the piano and if something wasn't right, he would stop and switch to something else. Unique experience to say the least.