K. Records
2003
Mount Eerie
About This Album
The Microphones' most demanding album, Mount Eerie, isn't exactly the follow-up to The Glow, Pt. 2 that one might expect. Instead of offering more expansive, kaleidoscopic pop, Phil Elvrum presents a concept album about life, death, and identity that spans five epic songs. Microphones fans are used to Elvrum's artistic twists, but this album is a hairpin turn, moving into much more abstract territory than any of his previous work. The 17-minute opening track "The Sun" ( "In which the story begins, where you are born and run away from death up the mountain in fear and are watched by a ball of fire," the liner notes explain) is a perfect example. It begins with heartbeats and the heavy, tolling bells that closed The Glow, Pt. 2, and moves to layered, galloping drums and horns that sound like a race or a hunting party, which are silenced abruptly by a ghostly choir, a hesitant guitar, and Elvrum's desolate, vulnerable vocals before an explosion of distortion finishes the track. It's a hypnotic, portentous beginning, introducing the suspense and search for spirituality that dominate Mount Eerie. The album is concerned with death in all of its forms -- the end of a day, of a life -- not in a morbid way, but as a necessary transition or as the answer to a question (which, of course, only provokes more questions).
Track List (try tracks 1,2 and 4)

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