Phil Elverum has come full circle. In the '90s, he became fixated on making DIY recordings, writing songs mostly as a way to have something record; he even named his band the Microphones as a celebration of the recording process.
Over the years, he turned his focus to the natural world, renaming himself Mount Eerie and writing existential poetry about the wild Pacific Northwest landscape that surrounded him in the small island city of Anacortes, WA. By the time he got to his most recent albums, recorded in the wake of his wife Geneviève Castrée's death in 2016, he had switched to digital recording, largely abandoning his studio experiments and focusing entirely on anguished lyricism.
With his 26-track double album Night Palace, due out November 1, he's returned to the old way of doing things. Once again recording on analogue tape, he's made an insular sonic world akin to his work with the Microphones, leaving equal space for hushed ambient folk, fuzzy bursts of indie rock noise and swooshing instrumental soundscapes.
To celebrate this return to his classic style, we're ranking his 20 best songs from across his career, including both the Microphones and Mount Eerie.
20. The Microphones
"II. Solar System"
Mount Eerie (2003)
At the transition point between his two projects, as the Microphones became Mount Eerie, Elverum turned his attention toward something grander: the natural world, and the blurry distinction between his internal self and the universe around him. After a blast of static segues out of the previous song (making "Solar System" un-playlist-able), Elverum whisper-sings a frighteningly beautiful acoustic ditty about his body being subsumed by canyons, quicksand and solar winds. It perfectly articulates the communion with nature he's been seeking throughout much of his work since.
19. Mount Eerie
"Moon Sequel"
Dawn (2008)
Elverum loves making sequel songs, and in this follow-up to 2001's "The Moon" (more on the that song later), he spellbinds with a stripped-down ballad backed by nothing more than a couple of layered acoustic guitars. While most Mount Eerie songs mull on deep questions about life, death and the natural world, "Moon Sequel" is made up of refreshingly petty quibbles about how an ex is thriving without him, and "the way that you get all my friends in the sack."
18. Mount Eerie
"Crow, Pt. 2"
Now Only (2018)
Now Only's devastating closer chronicles daily routines following a family tragedy — not the immediate aftermath, but the bit after that, when life carries on in spite of the grief. Amidst meditative fingerpicking, Elverum describes making breakfast for his young daughter, who heartbreakingly asks to listen to her late mother's album. Soft-spoken as ever, Elverum's response is matter-of-fact and absolutely crushing: "I'm sobbing and eating eggs again."
17. Mount Eerie
"Sauna"
Sauna (2015)
An oppressive drone blankets the 10 minutes of Sauna's title track, with taped-down organ keys and a reverberating gong creating a wall of sound to represent the near-stifling heat of a sauna. Elverum has always been brilliant at using soundscapes to evoke a physical setting, and "Sauna" is particularly inspired, with the sound of water hitting hot coals fully setting the scene and turning the sauna into a tiny universe of its own: "I don't think the worlds still exists / Only this room in the snow / And the lights through the cold / And only this breath."
16. The Microphones
"The Glow, Pt. 2"
The Glow, Pt. 2 (2001)
In five minutes, Elverum speed-runs through a collage of his signature sounds, with the title track of The Glow, Pt. 2 acting almost as a calling card for the album's sonic tapestry: a fuzz-punk intro, wide-panned acoustic folk, ominous force-of-nature organ drones, and a head-bobbing indie rock outro. Howling lyrical motifs that he has returned to throughout his career ("I took my shirt off in the yard," "There is no end," etc.), it's a career-best vocal performance from the typically soft-voiced singer.
15. Mount Eerie
"Ravens"
A Crow Looked at Me (2017)
Even when singing some of the most harrowing grief songs ever committed to tape, Elverum still finds poetic beauty in the natural world. With ravens as the song's central omen for death, Elverum's minor-key riffs set a mood that's eerie yet strangely inviting — an apt accompaniment for lyrics that are both crushingly specific ("It's August 12th, 2016 / You've been dead for one month and three days") and gorgeously impressionistic ("I glanced up at the half moon pink chill refinery cloud light").
14. Mount Eerie
"Tintin in Tibet"
Now Only (2018)
When I spoke with Elverum in 2018, he told me that his grief albums were "a tribute to my own destruction," rather that a true celebration of his wife. "I still haven't made a beautiful tribute to her," he said. I'd argue that he did exactly that with "Tintin in Tibet," a song about singing to his late wife despite her absence, and chronicling both the very start and the very end of their 13-year relationship. It's about death, but also about being "abandoned and in love, totally insane, apart from the rest of the world / We had finally found each other in the universe."
13. Mount Eerie
"Through the Trees Pt. 2"
Clear Moon (2012)
"I go on describing this place / And the way it feels to live and die." Over the years, Elverum has sung many self-aware manifestos about his reasons for making art, and Clear Moon's meditative opening track is as concise a raison d'être as he's ever given. Amidst wide-panned acoustic strums and bell-like chimes of electric guitar, both of which so quintessentially him, he offers an impressionistic portrait of the landscape around him, from the sublime ("There's no part of the world more meaningful / And raw impermanence echoes in the sky") to the ridiculous ("I know there's no other world / Mountains and websites").
12. Mount Eerie
"Between Two Mysteries"
Wind's Poem (2009)
Twin Peaks had a real zeitgeist moment circa 2009, and were frequently cited as an influence by indie bands at the time. It's obvious why Elverum connected with the show, given its moody Pacific Northwest atmosphere — and "Between Two Mysteries" channels the show very literally, interpolating part of the score and even name-dropping "the valley beneath twin peaks." It's gothic and yet strangely jaunty, with a calypso-esque groove (which sounds like vibraphone or marimba) that might be his catchiest instrumental hook.
11. The Microphones
"The Glow"
It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water (2000)
This early standout was such a monumental triumph that Elverum framed the entirety of 2001's The Glow, Pt. 2 as a sequel to it. It clears the path that Elverum subsequently followed to greatness, with an 11-minute soundscape that begins with naturalistic acoustic balladry, shifts into blustery sound design, crescendos with a fuzz groove that sounds a bit like DIY "Heroes," and then disintegrates into abstraction.
10. Mount Eerie
"Soria Moria"
A Crow Looked at Me (2017)
Like all of A Crow Looked at Me, "Soria Moria" is a devastating account of Elverum's wife's death, but it's also a chronicle of the "longing, a childish melancholy" that has tugged at him since youth — the "slow pulsing, red tower lights" that beckoned in the nighttime, the time he "saw fireworks many miles away but didn't hear them," and the lyrical motifs of 2001's "The Moon." Even if the midst of devastating tragedy, "Soria Moria" clings onto a quiet, fantastical hopefulness that a more peaceful place exists. The live album (After) adds to the atmosphere with gorgeous cathedral reverb.
9. The Microphones
"I Want Wind to Blow"
The Glow, Pt. 2 (2001)
With a simple riff, Elverum is able to create an entire sonic universe, breaking his guitar part into pieces — the melody, the droning bass notes — and panning them wide, entirely enveloping the listener with an acoustic guitar. The off-kilter arrangement is a mission statement: even as digital recording techniques became increasingly easy to access around the turn of the millennium, it's still worth chasing the fragile beauty of un-quantized human error.
8. Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron & Fred Squire
"Voice in Headphones"
Lost Wisdom (2008)
Part of the fun of Elverum's catalogue is the way Elverum constantly reinvents his own material, allowing the same songs to appear in multiple forms across different projects. He released the albums Lost Wisdom and Dawn within less than a month of each other, with the haunting "Voice in Headphones" appearing on both. It's the harmonies of Julie Doiron and Fred Squire — singing a hook borrowed from Björk's "Undo" — and the fractured guitar distortion that make the Lost Wisdom version especially spine-tingling.
7. Mount Eerie
"House Shape"
Clear Moon (2012)
By 2012's twin albums Clear Moon and Ocean Roar, Elverum had absolutely mastered the art of self-producing his albums in his converted church studio called the Unknown. Compared to the beautifully janky arrangements of his early work, "House Shape" is simply immaculate — organs, synths and acoustic strums that pulse against each other like billowing fog, the mist gloriously parting halfway through the droning verse, proving Elverum's impeccable restraint as an engineer and producer.
6. Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron
"Love Without Possession"
Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2 (2001)
In a self-penned biography accompanying new album Night Palace, Elverum addresses his brief marriage to actor Michelle Williams (without actually naming her), saying that in the "stunned negotiation page" after their split, he wrote a series of poetic songs about love: "It didn't work. I am embarrassed." He certainly needn't be embarrassed about "Love Without Possession." Essentially a tender articulation of the old saying that "it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," it celebrates a defunct relationship without shying away from the devastating pain left in its wake. "I wake up gasping in the void again," Elverum calmly admits.
5. Mount Eerie
"Real Death"
A Crow Looked at Me (2017)
It's impossible to compare Elverum's grief songs to the ones he made in other eras. I've never heard anyone articulate the immediate aftermath of loss quite as starkly as "Real Death," a song about how the raw reality of death defies being turned into art. A story about Elverum's late wife ordering a backpack for their daughter is so harrowing that it's frankly difficult to listen to — but "Real Death" sets a new standard for songs about pure, unbearable grief, and it's impossible not to be in awe of the stark truth-telling.
4. Mount Eerie
"I Walked Home Beholding"
Ocean Roar (2012)
Hailing from Anacortes, WA, and now living on nearby Orcas Island, Elverum's music has always been closely attuned to the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. But rather than marvelling at the enormity of nature, "I Walked Home Beholding" finds awe in the everyday: a quiet walk home, when it felt like "the whole town had been abandoned except for me." With gentle organs and pin-drop cymbal taps, the stillness of the scene brings about a quiet epiphany, as Elverum is "totally at peace with the meaninglessness of living."
3. Mount Eerie
"Distortion"
Now Only (2018)
While A Crow Looked at Me reels in the immediate aftermath of death, the subsequent Now Only has a year's worth of perspective. No longer simply trying to make it through the day, Elverum casts his observations wider — as on the staggering 11 minutes of "Distortion," as he reflects on how his idea of the afterlife has changed over time. There's the naïve moment he had to read from the Bible at his grandfather's funeral at a child, and how he told his mom he wanted to be remembered by future generations; how an early-20s pregnancy scare forced him to consider his ancestors for the first time; how Jack Kerouac's daughter dispelled the aura around her famous father; how his late wife still lives on in his memories. It's a crushing yet beautiful articulation of mortality — that, while each of our lives are "a galaxy of subtleties," everyone is ultimately bound to be misunderstood and forgotten.
2. The Microphones
"The Moon"
The Glow, Pt. 2 (2001)
Elverum's music has never quite belonged to a "scene." He arrived a little before the mainstream explosion of "big indie," and his geographical remoteness and rough-around-the-edges production meant that he never quite fit in with all those politely folksy artists on the Garden State or The O.C. soundtracks. But if there was ever a song that sounded a bit like a big indie rock hit, it's "The Moon," an adrenaline surge punctuated by cinematic horns, almost anthemic enough to be Broken Social Scene.
Of course, this is Elverum we're talking about, so it's still completely singular: the rickety acoustic guitars that introduce the song provide its unlikely underpinning, and his meek-as-ever voice is practically swallowed by the grinding organ while singing about lost love, "certain death," and the meaninglessness of living on a rock that's spinning through space.
1. The Microphones
Microphones in 2020 (2020)
Is it cheating to count a 45-minute album as Elverum's best song? Probably. And yet, the 45-minute Microphones in 2020 is, by all metrics other than its length, a fairly typical Microphones or Mount Eerie song, its hypnotic two-chord progression brought to life with metaphors about nature and musings on life's impermanence. A memoir in musical form, Elverum offers the definitive account of why he changed his name from the Microphones to Mount Eerie at the peak of his success, tracing the development of his artistry over the years.
His poetry is more high-flown than ever, as he depicts life as a waterfall, "With no bottom crashing end / And no ledge to plummet off." And yet he's also funny and detail-oriented: he describes doing martial arts in a mall parking lot after watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, eating breakfast on the couch on the porch of the punk house, and bumping into Bonnie "Prince" Billie on tour at an Italian truck stop. Amidst the ebb and flow of distortion, organ drones and acoustic strums, Elverum wraps up his life's work into a clear-eyed artistic statement. I've interviewed Elverum a couple of times over the years, but it's hard to imagine what I'll ask him if I ever speak with him again, because it's all already here.