Pitchfork
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It’s been nearly fourteen years since we last heard new music from beloved K Records heroes the Microphones. After following up their 2001 classic The Glow, Pt. 2 with the challenging and somewhat inscrutable Mount Eerie, they dissolved abruptly before the band—more or less the work of Anacortes, WA resident Phil Elverum and a rotating band of collaborators—confusingly re-emerged a year later as Mount Eerie, having ditched the Microphones moniker in exchange for the name of that final record. Though Elverum has gone on to release more than twelve records over that span, and much of that music covers some of the territory his former band walked, the precise spirit of naive quirkiness of the Microphones has never quite since been replicated.
Now in 2016 Elverum has decided to reactivate that old appellation, on a release of twenty-year-old material likely to be unfamiliar to even fans of the band. Titled EARLY TAPES, 1996-98, it’s exactly as stated—a compilation of sixteen songs either previously unreleased or taken from limited release tapes from Beat Happening guitarist Bret Lunsford’s Knw-Yr-Own cassette label.
Many fans of the band eager for more Microphones may have had hopes, but to be clear, EARLY TAPES is no “lost classic”; it’s about as definitively a “for the fans” release as you can get. As Elverum himself admits, “Listening back to this music now is mostly embarrassing to me.” And as to why he’s dug finally them out now: “I am still basically an overgrown teenager postponing a real job.” It’s both a completely reasonable motivation for a musician trying to make it in 2016, and still, despite the limited quality of the contents, a valuable exercise for fans of either the band or the era.
The value of EARLY TAPES, slightness of the output notwithstanding, is testament to the enduring power of the Microphones and the way they stood in to represent a thriving part of Pacific Northwest indie. Even the album’s first track, the previously unreleased early-days cut “Teenage Moustache”—the album’s silliest moment if not its slightest—manages to conjures a nostalgia not just for the innocent sweetness of early Elverum/Microphones, but also wooly ’90s DIY indie rock (especially of the K Records variety) and the exploding sense of total possibility in the late pre-internet age. The semi-tuned thriftstore guitar recalls the more ramshackle ditties of Beck’s One Foot in the Grave and Stereopathetic Soulmanure, and the vocals recall the teenage warbles on Modest Mouse’s Sad Sappy Sucker. It’s not a great song by any stretch, but there’s something powerful and pleasant about it.
Thankfully, it’s not all just nostalgia. There are at least a handful of noteworthy new arrivals on EARLY TAPES. Chief among these is the heart-tugging “Compressor,” which unsurprisingly also serves as the album’s teaser single. A simple concoction of a drummer-boy snare shuffle, two-note guitar lines, and a rhythmic tattoo of a chorus, it resembles a Notwist Neon Golden outtake “ft. Phil Elverum.” The six-minute epic “Wires and Cords” is equally strong, the lone track here that points directly to the force they would become. Elverum also answers a longtime mystery in the song’s liner notes by explaining the original meaning of the band’s name, and why he abandoned it: “My music project was about recording and the terminology around it, vaguely trying to say emotional human stuff using this equipment as a vocabulary....This is towards the end of me trying to use recording technology metaphors and the beginning of the irrelevance of my band name.” An ode of sorts to one of Elverum’s obsessions, Stereolab, this organ-driven love note to former girlfriend and bandmate Bronwyn Holm shows Elverum beginning to look beyond sound sketches and imagining the great possibility of songs as storybooks. Both “Microphone, Pt. 1” and especially the Rentals-en-français “Microphone, Pt. 2” are low-key winners as well.
Many of the other inclusions on EARLY TAPES really are of the throwaway variety—go-nowhere instrumentals like “For Kaye June 6” or “(Bass)” whose mundanity suffers further for lacking at least the gut-warming tickle of Elverum’s frail voice. But there’s a wide enough variety to keep the proceedings from dragging and even the weakest moments offer at least a little charm, such as “The Creeps”’s calliope-style noir or “Rebirth on Tape Deck Mountain”’s meditative circular guitar melody.
It’s understandable why Elverum felt he had to leave the Microphones behind; sometimes, it’s hard to feel like you’re really growing without a conscious decision to shed your skin, even if the snake underneath is ultimately the same. It’s a testament to that original band’s lasting power and impact that something EARLY TAPES even has an audience at all. The Glow, It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water, and Don’t Wake Me Up will all remain higher listening priorities than EARLY TAPES, but it’s nice to know this exists.
Tue Dec 27 06:00:00 GMT 2016