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The
Microphones: Mount Eerie
The Microphones get away with things that not many other bands could get away with while remaining in my favor: all of their songs are about nature and relationships, they release almost as many singles and rarities collections as they do new albums, they are sensitive and cute, etc., etc. Mount Eerie is apparently their newest attempt at testing my faith: a full-blown concept album with an incomprehensible plot line, 15-minute songs with lengthy stretches of repetition, and vocals by Calvin Johnson. Its hard not to take it personally; it seems like theyre doing everything possible to alienate me. But maybe its because this is the real punk rock, the music that will disturb even those who grew up on power chords. The trick is space. Rock music fans arent used to space. In fact, we listen to music to fill the space. And obsessive music fans cant stand space, so we fill every segment of our lives with music, listening to it in headphones, on the stereo, in the car, in the store while were buying more music to listen to. Of course, half the time were not really listening to it, were distracting ourselves from our problems, the certainty of death or debt or whatever. We need something to shock us out of our apathy, something that forces us to pay attention and to actually listen again. The obvious route is through volume or dissonance, but shit, son, I came out of the womb in a Minor Threat t-shirt, clutching a Sonic Youth bootleg in my fat pink fingers. We live in a noisy world, full of sounds that weve conditioned ourselves to ignore, like fluorescent light hum and computer whirr. Blocks of distortion are easy to get a grasp on and therefore easy to dismiss. The Microphones take the opposite approach with Mount Eerie. The five songs are sonically similar to past efforts, full of breezy harmonies, strummed guitar, and deafening drums. But this time, they are stretched and separated until the tempos meander and the silences between the notes become as prominent as the notes themselves. The first track, The Sun, is particularly unusual. I find English-major words like naked and harrowing coming to mind, but head singer-songwriter Phil Elvrum steers clear of the crass confessional sentiment that usually triggers these buzzwords, instead evoking these moods sonically. It starts with four minutes of muted tones and heartbeats almost being totally obscured by tape hiss, ambient but dreadful. Then comes about five minutes of drums, the storm before the calm. Finally, the vocals interrupt, but everything else drops out. So we get a few more minutes of mostly vocals, mixed so that it sounds like Elvrum is standing behind you, singing over your shoulder. The contrast between the percussive bombast of the second segment and the implied intimacy of the third segment is disconcerting. The song as a whole serves almost like a doorman at an exclusive club, dismissing anyone who doesnt meet the standards of the establishment. It forces you to pay attention: if you put Mount Eerie on in your car stereo, youll probably eject it after 10 minutes of driving down the highway to heartbeats and drums. The rest of the album is more normal, at least by the Microphones standards, but all of the segments take their time, bordering on overstaying their welcome. Elvrum is working on his own timetable, and he wont be bothered with your depleted attention span or anyone elses concept of what a song is. However, this fierce individualism can make for a challenging, or even unenjoyable, listen for someone not on his wavelength. Im not sure if this is an intentional challenge to our modes of listening, or an unintentional challenge brought on by an unwillingness to self-edit (Hello, Kettle? This is Pot, youre black!). But either way, Ive never flip-flopped on my opinion of an album as many times as I have with Mount Eerie from heightened expectations to slight disappointment to flashes of hope to anger to despondence to acceptance to enlightenment. Im hesitant to label it a complete success, but its heartening to see that Elvrum is willing to try something different.
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