Serious Thinkers Chatroom: The Microphones, “Microphones in 2020”
For the second meeting of the Serious Thinkers Chatroom, Ben and Mike unpack Phil Elverum’s single-track, 44-minute opus and return to the Microphones moniker.
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mike d
ugh, yet another cynical cash-grab band reunion
grissom9922
phil just couldn’t resist those sweet glow pt. 2 dollars
in all seriousness though, I got very excited over this announcement despite knowing that the microphones were never really a band, per se
mike d
it was interesting to receive that news, since phil elverum has released records as mount eerie at a steady clip in the 15-20 years since retiring the microphones alias
what did returning to “microphones” signal to you?
grissom9922
it was a surprise, certainly – I never really saw phil as the kind of guy to look backwards – he’s notorious for rarely playing old songs at shows and shying away from nostalgia in general
so I guess I anticipated a return to the sonics of those early records, knowing that there’d be some distinct reason for doing so
mike d
it kinda struck me as a logical, albeit unexpected, progression beyond linking up with julie doiron again for last year’s sequel album to 2008’s lost wisdom
insomuch as this is another example of phil elverum attempting to reconcile his past and present, which is a concept his last few albums especially have focused on, and is now a pursuit that more heavily incorporates elements of his own artistic iconography
grissom9922
true, and I think on some level it does make sense for him to move away from the mount eerie moniker after that pair of extremely heavy records in a crow looked at me and now only
whereas his approach there was writing with painful specificity about an extremely dark time in his life, it follows that with some distance, he might zoom out to think about his body of work to date and how his life circumstances have shaped it
mike d
definitely. his recent run of mount eerie albums (a crow looked at me, now only and lost wisdom pt. 2) had somewhat tethered that alias to the narrative of phil elverum’s (very public) recent past
i’m also curious, since i know you hold that microphones era in especially high esteem: was there something beyond a certain sonic footprint you were hoping to get from this album that you hadn’t from mount eerie releases?
grissom9922
that’s a good question, and the answer is…not really? those microphones records – glow pt. 2 in particular – were really big for me in high school, when I was first getting into slightly weirder music, but I always felt like the progression from the end of that project to the mount eerie era, which was at first super confessional and stripped down, then eventually incorporated these metal influences for a bigger sound for a few records records before scaling back again, made a lot of sense. sort of natural peaks and valleys of style. so the microphones moniker to me signaled another one of those seismic shifts
so it wasn’t exactly that anything was ever “missing” from the mount eerie era
so much as the microphones records were, for me, held in a particular esteem in that way that one’s foundational texts of music are
mike d
that’s well-put, the level of variance present on those records as mount eerie is actually pretty high. you’ve got these different stripped-back/confessional phases that presently bookend the mount eerie discography, the metal-adjacent material, the abstract/ethereal folk music…
grissom9922
true, I think it’s been easy to kind of take his music for granted, given how prolific he is, but there’s been a ton of sonic ground to explore in the last ~15 years of mount eerie
on that note, shall we listen?
mike d
let’s
so this 7-8 minute opening stretch of guitar strumming – unnecessary indulgence or table-setting fade-in?
grissom9922
I really like it – it’s very meditative, and the way it’s mic’d (if you’ll forgive the pun) kind of puts me in the sonic headspace of a microphones record
I also honestly didn’t notice how long this passage was the first couple times I listened
mike d
i like it a lot too. it does a good job of easing you into what ends up being a pretty sophisticated sonic/narrative piece, while also just sounding quite nice
grissom9922
the moment when phil’s voice finally chimes in at the chord change is really lovely as well, kind of a breathtaking moment after you’ve been lulled by this looping strum for several minutes
mike d
as we discussed with telas last time, i feel like there’s another disclaimer of headiness to be shared here. microphones in 2020 is a single 45-minute track that can’t be found on streaming services
it’s also not really “easy listening,” though it’s often nice-sounding in a way that’s easy to listen to
grissom9922
yeah, there’s certainly a boldness to releasing this as a single 45-minute block, not dividing it into any discreet parts
and I think it’s principled to not put a record like this on spotify, especially considering the circumstances of making a living as a musician right now
mike d
i agree, that this record is swimming against that particular current automatically endears me to it
the clearest antecedent to this album would seem, to me, to be the 11-minute “distortion” single from now only, another song that tried to locate meaning in a jumble of disparate memories
that album title being one of the last phrases spoken on this record heightens the association
grissom9922
yeah, I think the seeds of this record are definitely visible on now only
crow, that record and this one do feel like a very personal trilogy of sorts, though I doubt they were mapped out as such
a gradual scope-widening on a particular sort of writing
mike d
i love this moment (around 12 minutes in) where phil says “i remember where i was” and a lightning-like guitar crackle erupts. it’s a nice instance of musical mood mirroring narrative arc
you could credibly call this “prog”
grissom9922
same with this drum track kicking in on the line about checking the microphones@hotmail.com email
a lot of wonderful sonic details like that throughout this record
mike d
this album’s lyrics feature a lot of very specific cultural references, like that hotmail address or the story about seeing crouching tiger, hidden dragon. it’s an especially good version of that old cliche about personal art becoming universal when ably communicated, i think
the way elverum describes how these different objects affected him and changed his way of thinking is something i imagine most of us can relate to in some way
grissom9922
I love that there’s kind of a roadmap of specific influences laid out throughout these lyrics, some obvious (stereolab playing one chord for 15 minutes in concert) and some much less so (the aforementioned crouching tiger, hidden dragon bit)
mike d
i think you can even identify both influences in the music of this piece. the stereolab anecdote is followed up by some repetitious ambience, and the consistent guitar passage that plays throughout is peaceful and graceful in much the same way he describes crouching tiger as being
i’m curious as to how he mapped out the narrative, i think it’s quite ambitious
grissom9922
I read that it partly stemmed from a live performance he did under the microphones name for some sort of anacortes event, but yeah, it feels remarkably like a Proper Song despite being 44 minutes long, not so much a bunch of discreet elements stapled together
I mentioned to you recently that I’d been on a stereolab kick again – part of my approach to really getting this record has been revisiting the specific artists he names
(including an ill-timed red house painters dive)
mike d
unfortunate in a way that couldn’t be helped
grissom9922
for sure – it did get me thinking about latter-day kozelek in comparison to these last few elverum records though
they feel like two sides of a coin to me – both writing with this diaristic specificity, but where koz is increasingly consumed by his own ego and writing to satisfy it, elverum tends to write about the smallness of self against the backdrop of the world
mike d
they’re definitely linked in my mind, along with the recent records by father john misty and bill callahan
indie rock dudes of a certain age who’re all blurring the distinction between persona and autobiography in similar ways
there was a recent picture of elverum and callahan getting dinner that made me laugh. i enjoy thinking about all these people as a cabal of especially meta singer-songwriters; there’s definitely an ongoing “movement” that microphones in 2020 slots into
grissom9922
I did get a kick out of that photo, I’m glad they all hang out
I really connect with the lyrics that specifically dig into like, the experience of youth on this record – that line “young and ridiculous and we meant it” is really evocative
mike d
that connects to something i wanted to circle back to, which is the idea of microphones in 2020 being a reunion album. i think there’s a case to be made that it genuinely is?
it’s a full-length release about re-inhabiting a younger mindset and reflecting on what it was like to live within it
grissom9922
yeah I totally think that argument could be made – and sonically it does have a very earthy quality that evokes the music he made during that period without sounding exactly like it
he mentions naming the project as he did because the equipment felt like part of the band, and I get that here moreso than a lot of the mount eerie stuff
it really does sound like a band of multiple phils backed by a room of anthropomorphized gear
mike d
it also links up with that earlier unspooling of musical influences we discussed. he’s literally listing the various artists that inspired him to release music as the microphones as he does so once again
grissom9922
he does a clever job of weaving in snippets of old lyrics too – both directly quoting himself and sort of interpolating lines, like that one about finding the door into the mansion
mike d
plus the line at the end about taking his shirt off in the rain, of course
got choked up hearing that one
grissom9922
he meant it! it’s still off!
mike d
i also love that reference to having just finished recording glow pt. 2, it’s a cool/earned meta moment
before this new record, i think i took for granted how young he was during that first brush with indie fame. pitchfork named glow pt. 2 their aoty the year after kid a! it all must’ve been bizarre for an introspective guy in his early-20s
grissom9922
yeah same here, I always assumed he was a bit older than that at the time – that record feels so timeless and impressive to me – how did anybody in their early 20s make that?
and returning to those outside influences for a moment, the invocation of that mayhem record – the cemetery lyric from “freezing moon” off of de mysteriis dom sathanas – as a catalyst for writing this piece is really interesting to me – a kind of cartoonish line from a record that’s cartoonishly obsessed with death, but whose real-life context is awash in it
mike d
the way that anecdote is deployed in the narrative is also interesting. he skips over the entire mount eerie saga after mentioning “crumpling up and throwing away” the microphones alias, and cuts from there to listening to mayhem and suddenly feeling “microphones” feelings again
and talking about deciding to just release a record called microphones in 2020, “let the past hang like it’s no big deal”
his attempts to reconcile these different versions of self really resonate
grissom9922
yeah, I love that final passage of the lyrics – “every song I’ve ever sung is about the same thing”
and placing the “now only” phrase next to “there’s no end,” this line that pops up repeatedly throughout his work
it ties together this sweeping examination of this whole world he’s constructed throughout his career
mike d
it’s a creative way to “reunite” microphones, i.e. talking about his headspace during that era and how it’s ultimately not so different from his headspace now
it reminds me of another record from this year i know we both like a lot, hum’s inlet. both are returns of sorts on which the intervening years between albums are legible, and inform these new releases in a way that deepens the overall artistic project
grissom9922
yeah, I think there’s definitely a parallel in the approach there
also a band whose lyrical style, particularly on that record, reminds me of elverum
lyrics that evoke endless landscapes and the smallness of the individual in the vastness of space
mike d
in that respect, i appreciated the expansion of elverum’s instrumental palate on microphones in 2020 (it’s probably his biggest-sounding record since…wind’s poem?)
it’s a smart way to anchor this narrative about feeling, for lack of a better term, lost in the world
grissom9922
sonically it’s his densest since that and the clear moon/ocean roar combo for sure
which I love, he has a really distinct way of making drums and guitars sound huge and primordial
mike d
yeah, it can be surprisingly imposing for how home-spun his music also scans as being
grissom9922
the way he wears his influences from metal is one of the most intriguing things about his work I think
I almost get a sense of a band like sunn o))) from this record for instance, which obviously isn’t drone in any traditional sense, but does use these long stretches of repetition in such a way that each sonic shift is lent real gravity
mike d
it ends up being transportive in a fashion similar to the description of that 15-minute stereolab chord
elverum does a good job of making his influences legible while also successfully recreating their key emotional components in his own music
like, though we’ve both name-checked half a dozen artists this album reminds us of, i don’t think either of us would say they sound quite like this
grissom9922
yeah for sure, and it’s cool how in peeling back those layers further than ever before on this album, he digs into the more abstract methods of influence too – like that anecdote about bonnie prince billy and the nature of names and “packaging” as a band
mike d
a lot of my thoughts on phil elverum’s music can be boiled down to “he comes across as a deep/thoughtful dude” haha
grissom9922
true that
on that note, any final thoughts?
mike d
it’s one of the new releases that impressed me most this year, and i think it also stands out as one of elverum’s personal best
it strikes me as an especially incisive take on his usual lyrical concerns (impermanence, identity, the quotidian details that comprise a life), and the return to the microphones alias ends up being central to its success; i don’t think it would’ve worked quite as well as a mount eerie release
grissom9922
yeah, it’s certainly one of my 2020 favorites as well. I think I mentioned to you previously that my thesis statement on this record is that it’s the “twin peaks: the return” of indie folk, and I stand by that – similar to the way that season took a beloved and very much dormant project and imbued it with this strange new life while simultaneously interrogating the original and what it all meant in the first place
this record hits a similar beat for me
mike d
it’s an apt comparison. both are much-loved projects that returned in gnarlier, more challenging forms and reconsidered their original premises in a satisfying way
a worthy subject of discourse for serious thinkers such as ourselves, at any rate
grissom9922
certainly. glad we took the time with this one.