K. Records
2002
Song Islands
About This Album
As prolific as they are creative, the Microphones have released a surprisingly large amount of singles and albums for a group that has only been recording since 1998. Song Islands gathers most of their singles and EPs, including hard-to-find releases on tiny labels like Coming in Second and Instatone Brand, and proves that even at the beginning, the group's approach was firmly in place. Early works like "Bass Drum Dream" and "Where It's Hotter Pts. 1, 2 & E" feature the powerful, distorted drums, strummy acoustic guitars, droning keyboards, and pretty, naive vocals that define the Microphones' sound. Still, even though they're not presented in strictly chronological order, the tracks on Song Islands do trace the band's evolution: songs like "Feedback (Life, Love, Loop)," "Weird Storm," and "Deeply Buried" are wrapped in more noisy preambles and tangents than some of the group's more recent material. The album is also fairly egalitarian when it comes to representing all of the band's different sounds, providing just as many sonic freakouts as gentle ballads. "Heavy Eyes" and "Wake Me Up" lean toward the former, while "The Moon" and "I Lost My Wind" emblematize the latter.
Track List (try tracks 1,4,7,11,13,14 and 16)

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