Mount Eerie - No Flashlight

It starts with kd lang's "constant craving". There's a new take on the "took my shirt off" verse at the end though... at least I haven't heard either of these things in this song before. Interesting!

He played a ~20-minute new song at the start of the set that was basically an autobiography of the Microphones '95-'03, played a handful of old songs (incl. "Lanterns," "I Cut My Hands Off"), and then closed with another new songs that was a pretty stark and direct accounting of his past year and break-up and return home...

thanks for that fits!

of course! suffice to say the show was really something special, and the new songs are both great--if a lot more like his recent rambling mode with Mount Eerie than like anything Microphones (a distinction he discusses within the song at one point)--I hope he records them

haha knew big phil wouldn't tough out the east coast. take the man out of PNW but you can't take the PNW out of the man.

Correction to what I said about there being new lyrics in that video... that was a bit of "The Glow Pt. 2 (sequel)"!

ldn show last night, phil opened with the aforementioned microphones song then played about ten new songs - all very lyric heavy like the last couple of records seemingly all about the last year or so. friend spoke to the promoter and apparently he was able to come over for the one off show because he's been working with gaelic singers in ireland, which is v intriguing... anyway show was fantastic, really enjoyed it

shit i had no idea he was playing london last night. or been working in ireland.

was just about to chime in to ask if anybody went to the london show. i love that i can rely on on ilxor as my sole portal for contemporary music news.

wish i could give more detail but i was a little drunk

new album Lost Wisdom pt.2 out 8 November, collaborating with Julie Doiron again like on the original Lost Wisdom

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

i really like the single "Love Without Possession", and i think Now Only is the best thing he's ever done so i'm very much looking forward to this.

can't listen atm but statement reads like these are the songs played live recently, is the single in similar style to the last two records?

oh!!! he played 2 shows with Julie in Montreal on Sunday - they still seemed a bit shaky so I didn't think they had recorded together (as much as i hoped)

beautiful and heartbreaking songs, mostly about the end of his recent relationship. (he seems upset about it still.)

it's more major key and the melodies are more direct and less rambling than anything on the last two, while the lyrics aren't so stream of consciousness narrative in style. it's still a fairly sparse folk song that gets going a little bit in a wonderful moment towards the end, it's not that removed but i prefer it to anything on A Crow Looked At Me to actually listen to already

Not to be confused with the song "Lost Wisdom Pt 2" from 2009 album "Wind's Poem". Or maybe it is. Looking forward to this!

Didn't recent shows have a long song dealing with his recent divorce, sort of in the style of Now Only? His press release text makes it sound like there won't be any of that sort of thing here, but then there's only 8 songs? It doesn't exactly sound like he's going "back" to his previous sort of material either. Phil will just continue to Phil. Really glad to hear of another project

the track times are on itunes - there's one 7-minute track but the rest are pretty short and it's only 31 minutes as a whole

he played the AMAZING super-long new song that he's been touring with ("The Microphones 2019"?) at one of the shows on Sunday, but he said it wasn't finished. it definitely felt thematically different than the other stuff - less about MW and more about nostalgia/looking backward from 2019 to when he was 17, 27, etc.

the recent live ones about the breakup were fairly long, assume these are different then

aw man, i didn't know they divorced. what a bummer.

there's so much ephemera on his bandcamp page, from shitty early tapes to random live shows to recordings with string

quartets

this song is v beautiful

aye.

I saw the back cover of the album on the Twitter promo posts. It says recorded mostly at the end of May - so before "The Microphones" played What the Heck Fest and debuted some of that longer, newer? stuff.

Phil's site has had something called "Pink Light" under "upcoming" for a while. Given that this has a song called that, I guess this is that. Also "pink light" are the last words on the first Lost Wisdom album. I listened to it tonight for the first time in ages. That was probably his most unsettling work up to that point and I never went back to it much, despite being a big fan of him and Julie. This new song is a prettier thing.

i don't really like the first Lost Wisdom much, it's ok but a pretty minor work and i definitely prefer the Dawn versions of the tracks that were on both.

everytime i put lost wisdom (pt. 1) on i'm there in the living room with julie and phil and fred. three people kneeling by the tape recorder, singing live. it sounds like dirty socks, wooden floor, rain on the window to me and it plays out so perfectly.

Lost Wisdom 1 is... my favourite Mount Eerie album?

yea it's my favourite too, i also love how lived-in sounding it is. the songs are so haunting and memorable. new single is just as good

it definitely had a sustained vibe. I'd think I'm in a minority of Elverum fans nowadays, not going in so much for the hauntedness of it all.

it definitely had a sustained vibe

one thing that phil really excels at is creating a sustained vibe for each of his releases. he covers more musical ground than his non-fans would probably know, but for each album he manages to create really coherent and complementary collections of songs

Definitely. Most of them have a wider palate than Lost Wisdom but still hang together so well. You can get lost in any of them.

palette

they're like a pallet full of sound from a fog filled netherworld

not really feeling this new one

https://youtu.be/LsvQkuwMb0Y

Album is out. Oof. Phil misses Michelle. It's pretty but it's another tough listen.

it's lower key than Now Only, which is his career peak imo, but i'm still enjoying it and certainly more than the first Lost Wisdom

Peak eh? I liked it a lot, bought the record, but I can't spend a load of time with these things. Anyway the first song put out from this new one, "Love Without Possession" is my favorite of his in years. Gorgeous.

After that plus the name of this project, I was surprised that it is basically Now Only pt2 featuring Julie Doiron... that doesn't have the same ring to it though. I do look forward to listening more when I'm in the mood. Some pretty stunning moments here.

Is this the default Mt Eerie thread?

I don’t know anything about this music but my good friend is selling a job lot of early stuff - all the proceeds going to First Nations Development Institute

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Collection-of-Microphones-Mount-Eerie-Vinyl-and-Ephemera-FUNDRAISER-/303611851564?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49292

https://www.firstnations.org/

Ah man, cool selection. I swear there was another thread bumped recently for the upcoming album - might be under Phil Elvrum or his Microphones moniker.

haha, i own kind of am embarrassing amount of stuff in that auction. but some really rare stuff too, like the test pressings!

:o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7BkabF31ak&feature=youtu.be&t=01

the microphones - microphones in 2020 (2020)

heads up, phil is guesting on my mate's nts show this week reading some poetry and doing some new songs acapella. airing tuesday night/wednesday morning depending where you are:

https://www.nts.live/shows/plastic-language/episodes/plastic-language-12th-july-2023

https://www.lowprofilepodcast.com/season-7/72-phil-elverum-and-matt-fenton

Check out this podcast episode if you, like me, picked up "On Earth" by Peace from Phil's merch table and wondered what in the hell you were listening to. A 17 minute album I could never finish. I didn't know if it was a joke or some toss-off made with friends in an afternoon. No. Apparently Phil thought for a minute he'd release other people's music and wasted a lot of money recording them in Florida. And a bunch of other details that probably aren't true. Fun listen.

clear moon sounded absolutely wonderful to me tonight in a way that it never has before. must be the clear moon outside

Still umming and ahhing about tickets to his Brisbane show. Saw him last in 2013 (ocean roar/clear moon era) and it was a wonderful show in an intimate venue and I just think that might be enough for me.

Gave The Microphones - Mt. Eerie another spin driving through the hinterland the other day and that first track is still a majestic effort.

i'm going. he's playing mostly new material live at the moment and it sounds great, all like "huge fire" from earlier this year so i'm looking forward to hearing it in person

& he's released his best two albums (now only and microphones in 2020) in the past 5 years so hopefully he'll at least do something from now only

That’s a good sales pitch. I’m going to see David Toop and Loren Connors the night before there (highly recommend, free/donation gig), maybe I’ll back to back it? Time to listen to his new material and see what he does