by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
WHO: Mount Eerie with Thanksgiving, Jason Anderson, and Lightning Paw
WHERE: Cafe Eleven
WHEN: Monday, November 27th
Citing only Beat Happening and Eric’s Trip as influences, Phil Elverum’s music, known currently as Mount Eerie, is one of those great lo-fi recording artists with layered tracks of a singular vision that creates a sort of dissonant repetition that haunts. It’s that haunting that really draws me into the music. One song isn’t a leap off of the last, each is a new invention, but hollowed out in a different way and always with that separate but connected sound that only a four-track recording is usually capable of capturing.
Elverum performed and recorded as The Microphones for more than three albums, all released on the hipster Washington label K Records, founded by Beat Happening and Tree People’s Calvin Johnson. Elverum called it quits as The Microphones after releasing the album Mount Eerie. Then he moved to Norway. When he returned, his new musical vision was Mount Eerie. The idea of Mount Eerie outgrew the album and became Phil Elverum. I caught up with him in his hometown of Anacortes, Washington.
EU: How did you first get involved with Calvin and the K Records crew?
PE: Well, I was in a band here in Anacortes, Washington with a friend of Calvin’s so we went down to Olympia to record our first album. I met him there then I ended up moving to Olympia to go to school, so I just kinda forced myself onto them.
EU: Are you an outsider or a hipster in your hometown?
PE: It’s a small town, so they don’t really have enough people to have all those different subcultures, you know. Everyone is kind of equally an outsider or equally normal. Well not really, I mean people probably see me walking down the street and think I’m weird, but I never really embraced that identity.
EU: What inspired the renaissance from The Microphones into Mount Eerie?
PE: Well (laughing) the last album by The Microphones was called Mount Eerie and it seemed like a good stopping point for that project. It also seemed like a subject I wanted to talk about more.
EU: What is the subject of Mount Eerie?
PE: I don’t really know yet. I have this vague idea that it’s this description of this feeling of a dark mountain sort of looming over you. Which I think is a good way of conveying how a lot of things feel these days. Politically and emotionally. Like there’s a huge thing that no one is noticing.
EU: Something looming.
PE: Yeah. Eerie. I really like that word, I think it’s a really rich word.
EU: I get the sense that there is some spirituality in your music. Not really religious, but spirituality in your presentation. Do you ally yourself with any kind of spirituality?
PE: No, I don’t, I’m actually kind of wary of religion. I guess the thing that I’m skirting around with all of these songs I write is this sort of idea of another world. A hidden world coinciding with our world. Which I guess could be spiritual, but it could also be very…
EU: What was it like living in Norway?
PE: It was cool. It’s not that different than the Pacific Northwest. It’s kind of different, but not that much. It was weird to travel so far and then for things to be not that different physically, geographically. Mountains and bays. The people all look pretty much the same. Economically it’s similar. But it was cool. It was very cold and lonely and I made a few friends.
EU: How has cold and the mountains impacted the way you write?
PE: I’m from a place that is cold. It doesn’t get super cold, but it’s not Florida. I guess I am just comfortable in that climate. I love this time of year when everyone stays inside and works on their projects and domestic things. But mountains I think the appeal is that they’re inhuman. They’re one of those places that you can see from afar, but people can’t live, there so they’re pure.
EU: What musicians would you like to turn more people onto?
PE: I suppose my favorite band is Thanksgiving. I’m playing with them in Jacksonville. It’s their show, actually, I’m just flying in to meet him and travel with him.
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