[.ca] Mount Eerie

don't read reviews:
albums are good. albums are bad. don't let these reviews affect you good or bad.

a train wreck:
What a pretentious, overblown waste of my time. This album is a massive mistake. Not a single note did I enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I fully enjoy "Glow Part 2" and "It Was Hot", two albums with catchy, unpredictable arrangements and searching, inspired lyrics. Get these two. But this?? Phil just reached too far, a concept album about the whole universe, or whatever the hyped press releases try to sell you with. Listen to those samples, and the glacial nothingness and muttered syllables just go on ad nauseum. I very graciously give it two stars just to acknowledge all the effort that must have went into the production, all of it supremely misguided.

Their Best Record:
The Microphones really did it with this album. Perhaps its not the most accessible, but if you take this cd and listen to it alone in a situation where it is your one and only focus, the cd paints a lucid picture of what the universe is, how man has evolved and where man will go. The track listing maps it out. I. Sun - Takes the whole existence of man through its primal developement and brings us to the present.. I shouldn't continue with my interpretation, but it's all there, or perhaps I'm crediting Phil more than I should. I do have qualms with certain aspects of the Microphones, such as Phil Evrum's matter-of-fact indie voice, but the recording production far outweighs any such details - The microphone is the main instrument in this band: you hear the drone of room recorded at high sensitivity several times, you here the near clipping of his voice singing so close and softly ino sensitive mics. Its good, purchase it.

Atmospheric splendour.:
The instrumentation on this album is sparse. Very sparse. Rather than opt for the sensibilities of minimalist pop, Phil Elvrum often chooses to inject his songs with many minutes of static, endlessly prolonged chords and droning chants. Mount Eerie is not so much about musicianship as it is about concept, mood and emotion. Elvrum creates tangible atmosphere in all his tracks by splicing in unexpected flourishes of electric guitar or sound effects contributing to a sense of the album being a greater entity than simply a piece of music. There is the track's overtone or hook (though Elvrum uses these in the least conventional sense) and then there is the undertones of fog horns and wind inviting us to explore the environments that Mount Eerie creates. While there are some great musical moments such as the sweet hook on The Solar System or the spectacular rock section on Mount Eerie, they are few and far between. Come for the atmosphere, stay for the music. Admittedly, without the riffs that are common to the overwhelming majority of music, Mount Eerie becomes somewhat tedious. You must be utterly engrossed in the album to be conscious of the music's slow and subtle evolution otherwise it will pass you over, leaving you bored and unfulfilled. This is not the album to play as background music. The album opens with static, penetrated by the occasional sound of a distant and eerie fog horn, soon a steady bass drum rhythm begins and as it morphs from side to side new sonic layers are added to the mix, steadily culminating into fully developed rhythmic tribal drumming before Elvrum cuts this out to begin his orally told story, proving that while he knows no boundaries as a producer, his vocals could do with a bit of improvement. These ten minutes of tribal, sonic bliss are a truly spectacular introduction to the album; never boring or repetitive slowly moving from side to side and in and out of audibility and always growing, Phil Elvrum re-defines what is possible in the home studio. The production values on Mount Eerie, while intentionally gritty, are of the highest order as tracks seamlessly move along in their progression from The Sun to The Universe. Elvrum tells the story of his birth in The Sun to his death and re-birth in The Universe, primarily through his soundscapes, but the vocals are indispensable in aiding our understanding of what Elvrum is trying to communicate. Does he communicate his story successfully? Certainly, although the vocals are hard to understand in some parts due to the many layers of fuzz and sonic experimentation. Is this the greatest concept album ever produced? No, but it is far from the pretentious and self indulgent waste that some others have written it off as. Try and understand what Mount Eerie is about, and appreciate Elvrum's connection to nature and perhaps you can feel it too, because that is what this album is about: feeling and being drawn into another world of psychedelic possibilities. Go elsewhere for hooks and excitement.

And the big black cloud will come....:
Mt. Eerie is not a record to listen to in pieces. The record, more or less, is a song, a long piece that flows together quite beautifully in its own strange way. The opener, "The Sun" is a twenty-minute piece, with ten of those minutes devoted to tape hiss and pounding percussion and the other encompassing a fractured lament that builds into a terribly loud climax that ends in hiss. "Solar System" follows the storm, a nice acoustic reprieve from the hurricane of noise. "Universe" and "Mt. Eerie" are more or less one piece, with Phil Elvrum and Karl Blau taking turns with their grasp of lo-fi, minimalist mastery. And all comes to a conclusion with another track entitled "Universe" with Phil Elvrum's voice accompanied and later overtaken by the most ghostly of choirs, who sing a hypnotic vocal riff until all comes to a halt. A concept album about life and death, Mt. Eerie both begins quietly and ends suddenly, an apt metaphor for the living process. Sound a little pretentious? Perhaps, but there's always room for creativity and when it sounds this fully realized, there's nothing wrong with dabbling in indulgence. Highly recommended.

• The Sun
• Solar System
• Universe
• Mt. Eerie
• Universe