Genua, April 26, 2000. We're at the Fitzcarraldo club, where an Old Time Relijun's live show has taken place: Arrington De Dyonisio is chatting with some guys, double bass player Aaron Hartman is selling CDs and t-shirts to the fans, while Phil Elvrum is all alone, with his hands in his pockets and an Eric’s Trip t-shirt on, gazing at the wall with an alienated look. I get near and ask him if he's feeling tired, and he answers: “No, I just feel homesick”. Phil is exactly the person you would expect after listening to Microphones' albums: a shy, restless man who reveals his sentiments through music. His songs are sweet confessions continuously menaced (and often buried) by the guitars' feedbacks and the drum's shots. Songs that represent the reflux in a sensitive soul of poetic emotions that are able to find only in music their true expression. Phil is Microphones, because he does it all by himself. He plays organs, drums, basses, guitars and, when he just doesn't know what to do, produces his friends' records. The long list of his collaborations (Phil lends his drums also to D+, ex-Beat Happening Bret Lunsford's band) does not confirm the idea you could have of him, having seen the image on the cover of second album Dont’t Wake Me Up, portraying him sleeping on a mattress. An image that fits perfectly his art and most of all the whole generation that found a point of reference in Lou Barlow and in his little bedroom symphonies.
First record Tests, produced by Steve Fisk at Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, confirms the experimental feature already suggested by the title. It is all centered on the seducing effects of sound and tape loops' manipulations. It is a real mishmash of sounds: drums effects put together (the title track); gratuitous fragments(Feedback Leve and Tape Deck Ghost); fuzzy bass and drum marches (Like A Piranha); guitar strummings with cars passing in the background (Anacortes Has Secret Leve); Beat Happening-like childish ballads (Oh Anna); odd pop songs and nothing more (Witch Doctor); nursery rhymes based on some primary school Casio keyboard (Monsters); motley collections of sounds without rhyme or reason, plus a final cacophony (Quiet Groove); and irritating lullabies sung in french (Microphone PT2). Narcoleptic songs as Spy Cameras, Little Songs or Microphone PT1 look promising but remain unfinished. Listening to the conclusive Wires And Cords (a two-minutes irritating digital ticking) I even thought my CDplayer was not working. A very disorganic record, that could knock out even those who are more accustomed to eccentricities. No one would have been able to imagine the qualitative leap that happened one year later with Don’t Wake Me Up. The first two tracks, Ocean and Florida Beach, evoke the best melodic distorsions teached by Eric’s Trip; Here With Summer is the instrumental interlude that Folk Implosion haven't done anymore in years; I’m Getting Cold is a short organ march hardly rising over the noise; I’ll Be In The Air would be a very sweet pop sketch if it wasn't for the interference of a guitar in My Bloody Valentine style; Tonight There’ll Be Clouds, It Wouldn’t and You Were In The Air are two weak melodies kept in feedback splinters, while the conclusive I Felt You seems an outtake from Sebadoh's third album. Window is a collage remix of Don’t Wake Me Up's tracks, plus six “rejects” that did not find place in the album and that you can pleasantly listen to, after all. Third album It Was Hot So We Stayed In The Water doesn't have the same impact of his predecessor and sounds really too weak to leave its mark on us. The experimental work done in studio is not supported by incisive songs this time. Everything sounds dull and lazy and unfortunately, except a beautiful cover of Eric’s Trip's Sand, the CD doesn't offer anything else that makes me want to listen to it once more. Fortunately the intensity of the better times is recognizable again in The Glow Pt.2, last year's album, that reached the first place in Pitchfork ezine's yearly charts. This time all tracks are beautiful and support a solid sound that is hard to find in these last years' indie rock survey, that's mostly flat and uninteresting. The boy's songwriting is now completely mature and Microphones' name has entered today's best american singer-songwriter's list, I mean that one including Songs: Ohia and Swearing At Motorists.
Here is the interview with Phil.
Sodapop: It's strange to think of you as the drummer of Old Time Relijun and in the same time as the man behind the one man project Microphones? The music is so different. How these two souls live together?
Phil: Playing the drums in Old Time Relijun is where a very specific wild part of me comes out. The Microphones is where every single part of me comes out, from soft to wild, because it is all me. Old Time Relijun is 3 souls, The Microphones is one.
S: Can you give us a little bit of history about the Microphones? What music did you listen to while growing up?
P: My dad and his friends were always playing folk music on the couch, and there was always music playing in the house. All kinds. Jimi Hendrix, Beach Boys, Run DMC, Woody Guthrie, everything. There were people who played music in the woods across the lake and I would hear them at night across the water. I lived in the forest and there was a sound of a distant foghorn on foggy nights. You could always hear it.
S: When I met you in Genua you were wearing an Eric's Trip t-shirt and in your previous album there was a cover of "Sand". I think that they were one of the best and most under-stimated band of all time. What other bands influenced your music?
P: The Pounding Serfs, Karl Blau, Gravel, Mirah, Golden Shoulders.
S: There appears to be a strong sense of community in the music scene in and around Olympia, how big a part has that played in helping you with your music?
P: I wouldn't be able to make my records if I didn't live around all these great people. Everyone helps in a different way. The studio exists because of Calvin Johnson's love for the community. It is a group effort that comes out sounding like a solitude experiment.
S: Is it true that the first gig you went to was The Beat Happening in your backyard?
P: Well, they played in my backyard. My parents were friends with their friends. Anacortes is a small town. I didn't like it though. The first show that I went to by choice was M.C. Hammer at a coloseum in Vancouver.
S: What do you listen to in your free time?
P: I just got an old truck that doesn't have a radio at all. I really enjoy going on long trips and not listening to anything. It makes me hear all the music of the world and sing along to it. I love it. I have a million records and I usually don't want to listen to anything.
S: It's incredible how the sound of your music illustrate the feelings. Do you have any theory on songwriting and composing?
P: I think it's the most important thing to try to illustrate feelings in art; music or whatever. I don't really think about anything else. There are lots of ways to get to the feeling, many tools to use. And also many feelings. First of all, I have to live my life in a way where I can feel things in the first place. Then I can express it.
S: Are you ever going to do a tour in Italy as Microphones?
P: Yes, in September.
S: Last question: what record would you like to be played at your funeral? Why?
P: I was talking about this this morning to my friend. She showed me her address book and told me which people to call when she died. She wants her body to be buried underneath an apple tree. I decided I want to be left on top of a rocky mountain where big birds will eat me and fly off. So, that will be my funeral. It will smell disgusting. I will look gross, and there will be a million flies and birds and maggots and the rocks will be stained red until it rains again. I don't really want a record to be played. Maybe a record of bird sounds to attract vultures.