Microphones’ ringmaster Phil Elvrum has never been one for subtlety. His records have gained increasing notoriety for inventive tape manipulations and marvelously- inverted pop melodies, but his ridiculous ambition has been just as instrumental. Consider, for instance, that 2001’s excellent The Glow, Pt. 2 was a concept record about fire. It should strike everyone as only slightly bizarre that Mount Eerie, the follow-up, is an album about terra firma. Mount Eerie actually does a fair job of aurally representing the solidity and size of his subject matter. Whereas previous Microphones albums used tape hiss and mangled acoustics to convey a sense of warmth, Mount Eerie employs deep bass bubbles and heavy percussion. The change in theme and texture isn’t a problem – Elvrum never seems to run out of imaginative sonics to fill the headphones.
- Todd Weiser
Problems do arise, however, when one considers the quality of the songs. Elvrum has never cared much for traditional structure, and his tendency to sound like a child improvising rhymes about wind and fire has always lent a charming na