_____________________________________________________________________________
::k4:
a r t i s t :: The Microphones
t i t l e :: Microphones In 2020
d a t e :: 2020-00-00
l a b e l :: self
c a t n r ::
g e n r e :: Rock
s o u r c e :: WEB
b i t r a t e :: 262 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: LAME 3.100 -V0
t r a c k s :: 1
p l a y t i m e :: 44:44
s i z e :: 83.88MB
tracklist
1 Microphones In 2020 44:44
releasenotes
Before he borrowed the name of the mountain that looms over his hometown of
Anacortes, Washington, Phil Elverum wrote and performed songs as the
Microphones, named in tribute to his recording equipment, which seemed to
breathe and swell with a life of its own. In the summer of 2019, 16 years
after the projectÆs last proper release, Elverum exhumed this moniker for a
show filled with old friends. As he writes now, the performanceùand the
internetÆs subsequent elationùraised some existential quandaries about past
identities and ôself-commemoration.ö Over the course of a year, Elverum
coalesced these thoughts into Microphones in 2020, a 45-minute song about many
things, including artmaking, self-mythologizing, and what it means to bear
witness to oneÆs own existence and transformations.
ElverumÆs art has always tackled complex trains of thought. The MicrophonesÆ
music tended to do so on a cosmic scale, gazing out at the natural world for
meaning. Elverum veered away from these wide-eyed tendencies following the
death of his wife, the multi-disciplinary artist GeneviΦve CastrΘe, in 2016.
ôConceptual emptiness was cool to talk about/Back before I knew my way around
these hospitalsö he sang on the album recorded very soon after. Since then,
his solo work under the Mount Eerie moniker has been rooted in plainspoken
specificity. But as Elverum has made clear over the years, the titles that
separate his projects are irrelevant because the questions he pursues have
remained the same. ô...Every song IÆve ever sung is about the same thing:
standing on the ground looking around, basically,ö he sings here. ôIf there
have to be words, they could just be/ænow onlyÆ and æthereÆs no end.Æö
Though Microphones in 2020 looks back at a specific moment when Elverum was
finding his footing as a young musician, it carries the weight of every
experience heÆs had since. The skeletal two-chord melody that carries the song
evokes his stark compositions of recent years but is punctuated by bursts of
analog noise, calling back to earlier experimentations. (The strumming itself
echoes the opening of 2000Æs It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water.) He channels
the wonder of his youth as if no time has passed, exalting the sublimity of
waterfalls, rainstorms, and crashing waves. ôWeÆd go up on the roof at night
and actually contemplate the moon,ö he murmurs, in quiet awe at the purity of
these practices. ôMy friends and I trying to blow each othersÆ minds just
lying there gazing, young and ridiculous and we meant it, our eyes watering.ö
His voice is steady, his gaze unflinching. He is kind to this version of
himself, the soft kid who saw meaning and metaphor in everything.
Elverum imbues these memories of constant experimentation with undeniable
romance. ôWhen youÆre younger every single thing vibrates with significance,ö
he sings. ôGazing at the details in the artwork of a 7", devouring every word
in a zine, there was barely internet/Meaning gets attributed wherever appetite
bestows a thing with resonating glowing ringing out through a life.ö (To that
end, a significant and delightful chunk of the song is dedicated to a
revelatory screening of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at a dollar theater in
Aberdeen.) But even as he sprinkles references to the work that would blossom
from these rushes of inspiration, Elverum never falls prey to the wistfulness
that so often accompanies nostalgia. ôThe beast of uninvited change,ö as he
calls it, always makes itself known no matter how much we will it away.
The line Elverum traces through his life is not a linear one. His thoughts
skip around in time and space, from the big picture to minute detail, tethered
only by the hypnotic guitar melody, but sometimes that, too, slips away. New
textures arise, occasionally drowning everything else out: distorted
basslines, cavernous drums, amp hiss, harmonious overdubs, and glimmers of
fuzzy tape deck ghosts. At one point, after Elverum dives down into the center
of a lake, everything dissolves into a dazzling, mysterious shimmer fully
embodying the beauty of an earlier line: ôExtravagant solitude invigorates.ö
Then, the double-tracked chords return and the song rumbles back to life:
nothing stays the same.
Near the end of Microphones in 2020, Elverum recalls running into the touring
outfit of Bonnie ôPrinceö Billy in a parking lot in Italy. The band, he
casually notes, was wearing matching tracksuits, ôa kind of Italian tour
costume.ö ItÆs a delightful, mundane image, the sort of observation that other
songwriters might find superfluous, but one thatùlike noting the exact date of
that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon showingùdoes the heavy lifting of making
an already detailed world even more vivid.
The memory of this encounter kicks off a line of inquiry that doubles as the
songÆs coda: What is the root of this lifelong pursuit of creativity? Why is
Elverum driven to make ôwild swipes at meaningö? His tendency to play with
words and poke around for significance started in childhood, Elverum explains
here. But was it nature or nurture that has led him to ôblur the boundary
between myself and the actual churning dirt of this place, that it feels
normal to me to speak with the voice of weatherö? He touches on the bizarre
power and privilege of being an artist, especially one with a platform.
ôWhen I took my shirt off in the yard I meant it, and itÆs still off,ö Elverum
declares in the songÆs closing minutes. Elverum devotees will recognize this
as a direct allusion to the title track of the MicrophonesÆ most beloved
record, 2001Æs The Glow Pt. 2. But itÆs what comes next that transcends any
familiarity with ElverumÆs catalog: ôIÆm still standing in the weather looking
for meaning in the giant meaningless days of love and loss repeatedly
waterfalling down and the sun relentlessly rises still.ö ôMeaningö and
ômeaninglessö: these words appear again and again across Microphones in 2020
and ElverumÆs discography at large. There are no easy answers in life; some
questions will always remain unresolved. But there is a great and terrible
beauty in this universal, timeless uncertainty.
Url: https://pwelverumandsun.bandcamp.com/
_____________________________________________________________________________
The_Microphones-Microphones_In_2020-WEB-2020-k4