Since there’s not much else to do when you’re stuck inside due to a global pandemic, my roommate Savannah and I have taken to watching TV shows together, almost like an old married couple. Our current endeavor has been the series Lost. It’s my first time watching it, and Savannah’s third. Every once in a while, she’ll turn to me and say something like, “You’d never be able to imagine where this is going to go next”. Lost is kind of a wild show in that way. Listening to Microphones in 2020 gives me that same feeling–the feeling that when you’re young and at the beginning of things, you have absolutely no idea what turns your life is going to take. Looking back through Phil Elverum’s life in vivid descriptions of formative vignettes makes that strikingly clear. Listening to him recount anecdotes of childhood and teenage years, hearing him list of movies and artists that shaped this artist that has played such an important role in my artistic life–that’s a very cathartic experience.
An inherent part of any artistic endeavor is documentation. Even non-representational abstract paintings are a record of experimentation on the part of the artist, they just have a small scope. Much of Phil Elverum’s work has been centered around documentation, and the larger canon of his work can be seen as a big long recording about finding meaning in the world and experiences of it. The trajectory of this has changed wildly, from early enthusiastic and almost naive explorations of recording that detailed the inner-workings of audio equipment, to intensely personal outpourings of emotion, to admirations about the power of nature, to very literal and wordy songs about pain and personal tragedy.
Elverum often refers to his whole body of work as “one long song”, which is literally true for this album. In a 45 minute odyssey, Microphones in 2020 looks back at all that information; at a life lived; and at work done, and lays it all out, almost as an unburdening of piled up memories, sort of like some curated public journal entry. Some lines like, “…I probably won’t find shelter in the arms of any other person / though I will try” are quite sad in tone, but the song never lingers on one mood for two long. It rocks forwards and backwards through Elverum’s life, from image to enigmatic image. The emotions evoked by the song are enough to bring one to tears, but not out of despair. It ignites a sort of nostalgia for the formative years of life, even if, as I am, you’re amongst those years of your life.
As a fan of both the Microphones, Mount Eerie, and Phil Elverum’s photography, this was a very satisfying release. I’m invested in the entirety of his body of work. Much of Elverum’s work is self referential–there are threads to follow, lines that connect to one, and Microphones in 2020 is crossroads for all of those thematic trails. To someone unfamiliar with his body of work, Microphones in 2020 would be a daunting sonic undertaking that wouldn’t resonate in the same way to someone with an even cursory knowledge of the Microphones.
The famous line “I took my shirt off in the yard” from Elverum’s most recognized work, The Glow Pt. 2, rings out in a bold and heavy fashion in 2020, followed by “I meant it, and it’s still off”. There’s a lot packed into those couple of lines. Phil has always bared his emotions for anyone who chooses to witness–he feels things rather deeply, but this line also speaks to the sentiment that he’s “back where [he] was when [he] was 20”, something that’s echoed throughout the entire song. Elverum sings, “Beneath Mount Eerie I was who I already am”.
Despite the shifts that come with experiencing life, to Phil, there’s an essentiality to his existence as this person that he is. The Microphones and Mount Eerie are incidental to the person he is, the human who is these two projects, but is also a separate being standing next to them, engaging with them as he chooses. He took the Microphones moniker out of its box and decided to wear it for the first time in years after switching to Mount Eerie with just the shrug of a shoulder, loudly proclaiming “it’s no big deal”. All of these things and themes that make up the Microphones/Mount Eerie/Phil are simultaneously very meaningful, yet comically arbitrary. It’s a choice that, in an absurd and silly way, asserts the autonomy and artistry of Phil as an artist.
Every time Phil Elverum releases a record, it feels just like what I need to hear in that moment. When writing about his music, it’s difficult for me to not make it somewhat personal, because they feel so pivotal to me. Maybe I’ve become too invested in the life of this stranger, or I’ve indulged too far in the fantasy that our ways of seeing the world are somehow parallel, but that doesn’t change the impact of these records. Upon first hearing about the nature of this 45 minute long track, I honestly was skeptical. It seemed a little boring, to be frank. Yet it’s drawn me in again and again, shifting emphasis and stirring emotion with each listen.
