Written by Issa Nasatir & Sadie Almgren
Photographed by Sadie Almgren
“Recorded music is a statue of a waterfall.”
This is one of the many visceral images that appear in the song “I Spoke With A Fish,” off of Mount Eerie’s latest record Night Palace. Phil Elverum, an almost 30 year veteran of recorded music, whose acclaimed projects The Microphones and Mount Eerie pioneered so many different recording styles, decided to suddenly dismantle his life’s work with one line; and in recorded music, no less.
If RECORDED MUSIC IS A STATUE OF A WATERFALL, then live music is the pure, recycled kinetic energy of the falling water, and Mount Eerie’s opener Ragana is its absolute rawest form. The two person band traded between guitar, vocals, and drums, a delicate exchange of timbre, with guitar tones reminiscent of Godspeed You! Black Emperors F♯ A♯ ∞, and perhaps just as paranoid. Where Phil was quiet and contemplative, Ragana were earnest and explosive, driving his anti-colonial messaging home with a screaming bang. Given we were in Boulder, songs like “Death Drive” and “Death to America” fell on deaf ears; at times, sounds of Charli XCX’s “Club Classics” bled through the walls from next door, adding some sort of perfect je ne sais quoi to the messages clearly present, as people carelessly moshed to Ragana’s turmoil and desperation.
And after a brief interlude of amusedly watching the frat boys and Kindle readers, the man himself appeared. The first thing Phil did was take off his shoes, revealing green socks (a welcoming sight for a blog of our name), grounding himself before such an existential performance. We collectively dug our toes into the earth, and deeper – into time, rock, wind, and understanding. All of the whirling hell in which our world takes form was invited to sit down for a fireside chat.
Joined by Ragana and his friend Jenn, Phil began with “I Saw Another Bird” and “Broom of Wind” familiarizing us with his daily life, and the thoughts that slip into view during chores and on walks. His ability to weave heavy themes into the bits and pieces of daily experience that we often find mundane is what makes him a master of his craft. Sweeping with a worn-down broom represents the rhythmic brutality of life, and conversations with fish and ravens remind him of his smallness and impermanence; suddenly everything is nothing, and nothing has become everything. We opened our hands, and Phil offered that which we could not see or smell, that which lives in the space between, the passage of time and the feeling of cold wind whistling through your ears and nose.
Insisting on a wandering contemplation of meaning before every song, it feels as though Phil gathered us in a huge circle, offering stories and wavering discoveries within these songs, complete with a gong, a recorder, and a strange wooden flute. Generously he provided us with hesitant descriptions of songs before launching into each: “Non-Metaphorical Decolonization” might be about “doing villages maybe,” “Huge Fire” might infer “reaching into unreachable impossible nonhuman spaces.”
But really, who knows? Not him. Not yet. And maybe not ever.
Phil has evolved from a young man with insurmountable questions into a man with no answers and even more questions, but he seems less lost than when he started his journey of exploration. The content of this new batch of songs came not from a desperation of needing answers, but an appreciation of the journey they lead him on each day.
After his spiritual guidance had ended, one could find the man himself handing his merch out, acting out the second and third phases of the evil master plan he laid out in “Co-Owner of Trees”: 1. Make records 2. Sell records 3. Make money. We talked of his slight Buddhist adherence (while he handed me a card reader) and the mega church hub that is the Springs, to which Master Elverum gave us one mission:
Begin a Buddhist Mega Church in the heart of Colorado Springs.
