The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2 POLL

Poll results affirm that this album is very front loaded (or a masterpiece of album sequencing, depending on how you look at it)

well also
* 14 votes on an album with 20 tracks
* people are more likely to remember songs near the beginning of the album which they've probably heard more often than those near the end

also tracks 1-3 here are among the best tracks 1-3 I've ever heard

how did headless horseman get shut out??

Not sure if they're my overall favourites but goddamn "Samurai Sword" and "I Want to be Cold" are fucking amazing blow-your-ears-out tracks

Surprised this original poll didn't have "I Want the Wind to Blow" as the clear winner.

This record gets better with age. Most of Phil's stuff does. He's a genius.

been revisiting this since the new one came out.. phil is an absolute madman for putting i felt your shape and samurai sword right next to each other on this

hahaha, yeah! samurai sword might be the hardest rocking microphones song!

i felt your shape is such a beautiful song. i really can't express how much this album changed my musical listening and playing when it came out. i was still 17 or 18 or so, and i had never heard experimental/indie music like this, the thought of burying "i felt your shape" near the very end of an album, after many passages of relative silence and quiet and distant barges...all of it. it just really blew my mind. "map" used to mean absolutely everything to me. i had this really basic physical set of movements i would sometimes do to that song, like it would just compel me to stand up and grind my arms in slow motion circles in opposite directions, like i was atlas trying to take the earth and compress it down to a tiny rubber ball. really fucking weird, and i'm glad no one ever walked in on me, but it's still weird to me to think that i was this totally sober kid doing this, in the dark with the lights off and headphones on. very hard to explain but this album will always be important to me

My Roots Are Strong and Deep deserves more love on this thread. I probably wouldn't have voted for it -- really hard to compete with that opening trio -- but I was obsessed with the echo on that piano for a long time.

Think all of the tracks deserve a revisit. “You’ll Be in the Air” is such a grand, succinct tune.

yup that's a good one too.

Having relistened to It Was Hot and Mt Eerie the album since Microphones in 2020 was released, I still think this one stands handily above them. Just the right mix of catchy songs and his fantastic production decisions.

I can’t really hang with the vocals but yes this album is a huge accomplishment. I love all the stretches of empty space and I love when they rock the fuck out. What’s the song with the incredible droning strings and Mirah vocal? Is there more than one?

I saw Phil live around 2002. Towards the end of the set, a guy in a bear costume tied his legs together and lifted him up in the air with this pulley thing. So there’s Phil’s up in the air hanging up side down holding his guitar. He led the audience in a singalong of some spontaneous bear-related refrain and the bear let him down. It was pleasantly twee.

I want to be young again and listen to this album for the first time.

damn, yes. walking outside at night with this on headphones is something else. could never understand why 'it was hot we stayed in the water' didnt get bare love as well, though...

It Was Hot was "the" album for me, but Glow came out pretty soon after I got into it, so it was all kind of one big warm quilt of music in that time.

Saw the Microphones perform "Microphones in 2020" early last year in a Gothic Revival church in Brooklyn Heights --- it was absolutely tremendous, with the fuzzed-out bass vibrating through every stone in the building. A really special, brain-resetting show.

It Was Hot... was my introduction to the Microphones (about four years after it came out) and I loved it, then Glow Pt. 2 completely blew me away - the world of those albums felt so vivid and real. Elverum's body of work is incredible to me at this point really.

those two albums blend together for me too, i listened to them both a lot around the same time. the production/arrangements are amazing.