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If you’ve never experienced a Phil Elverum project before (Mount Eerie, the Microphones, other K Records stuff of the early ’00s), I cannot recommend listening to Wind’s Poem.
As a previous Microphones fanatic, though, I can only speak of the album through my expectations.
Mr. Elverum has not strayed from his major-key, 5 note melodies, nor has his lyrical powers moved beyond the awkwardness of his earlier, more emo-tinged work. “My heart a frozen boulder” always stuck out in every listen. His words are more removed form his emotions this time, making the content he covers more distanced, more cerebral. It seems like he’s attempting to construct a metaphysical landscape out of his relationship with nature. But as my wife exclaimed on one car ride: “Those words just don’t fit!! [laughing]” It’s true, the rhythm of the words are sometimes incredibly clunky. I am sometimes inspired by philosophical texts, but their jargon is not the stuff of songs.
Wind’s Poem is made up, on the larger scale, of two different style of sound: loud, abrasive and simple; and gentle, meandering, and simple.
1. Loud songs. Walls of loud guitars and a wash of cymbals. Mr. Elverum’s voice comes in occasionally, but the mix has no room for him. This competition of sound makes for an unsatisfying listen. I tended to skip these song for that reason. The songs perpetuate themselves with a droning note or chord, perhaps to build tension before moving to the next note or chord. This gives that incredible sense of walking through waist-high sludge when executed successfully, but the muddy mix (no pun intended) causes it to simply feel like an extended wait until the next note or chord! Oh no!
2. Soft songs. These have always been Mr. Elverum’s strong point and Wind’s Poem is no exception. Each song has an interesting sonic space and arrangement. His vocals don’t compete as much in the mix, though being able to distinguish the words are not always desirable, as I stated.
I struggled, though, as I said in my previous post, with the energy of the record. These soft songs feel motionless. They feel largely uninspired. Like they were written in a period of numbness. Whereas Mr. Elverum’s work as the Microphones was powered by his strong emotional feelings, these songs feel like they lack that compositional will to be. He has some nice melodies, some interesting arrangements – the record is fairly well-crafted. It’s lacking energy, though. But that’s purely my intuition. Nothing objective.
If you are interested, here are the tracks that I particularly enjoyed. “Between Two Mysteries” is particularly great! That track comes highly recommended.
8. Between Two Mysteries ****
9. Ancient Questions
11. Lost Wisdom pt. 2
12. Stone’s Ode
Note on the reviews of the record: too much attention paid to Wind’s Poem’s debt to metal. Other than loud, abrasive guitars, moving in unison, I just didn’t think it was such an important factor in experiencing the album. No double-bass drum, no screeching/guttural vocals. Then again, my understanding of metal is limited. To me, this record sounded just like his other records. No additional references necessary.
Listened all the way through Mount Eerie’s “Wind’s Poem” on the train ride home tonight. Sounded like classic Phil Elverum, minus the charm. Minus the attention to detail. It felt big, weighty, and murky. The immensity of the sound he tried to create in the louder moments was so blurry that the sense of scale was lost. The album also felt like it was lacking the “will-to-be” of his earlier work. His melodies and musical ideas were often carried by his voice’s gentle weariness. It seemed like he was meandering this time around. I know the feeling. The music felt like it was written in an isolated space, with a limited feeling of the expanse of the world. That strikes me as odd, especially since his works have always had a thought to the “elements.”
Ahhhh. But then again: the music triggered an emotion in me, one that I equate with a smaller sense of the world, of a certain boring depression. Of course I would have trouble with the record! More later. I’ll listen more tomorrow!
I’ve been riding the train for almost 4 hours a day for the last three months. Damn I need to get a netbook! I thought about writing things in a notebook, but I really don’t have time to transcribe thoughts on the weekends. Simply too busy!
I’m getting married in a week and a half. My internship in the City has finished, so I no longer ride the train for quite as long. I’ve found that my brain has decided to take a vacation. No intellectual thoughts have occurred. Thought about music has ceased. Especially since every waking moment is spent thinking about what I should be doing to help to prepare for what will be a stupendous and amazing day. Getting married is such a time sink!
My fiancée and I have been working diligently on music playlists. Dinner and post dancing music we’ve worried less about. The dancing playlist has been quite a task, though. I dislike dancing. It’s mostly dull, and wherever I’ve ever been dancing, there’s never any music played that I actually enjoy. Putting together this playlist meant that I (we, I mean) got to pick out music that I love… to dance to….
From Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)
Some great melodies, but lacking execution when it comes to the arrangement, recording quality, and form.
“In The Flowers” begins with a flood of highly compressed (data compression) noise, followed by arpeggios from an effect-laden acoustic guitar. The sound is dense and is particularly packed in the high-midrange. There is no space. Nothing sounds natural. Avey Tare’s voice sings a sing-songy tonal melody. This is fine. It repeats itself. The tempo is a lilting 3/4. Because the sound is so muddy in the high-mids, I can’t relax and enjoy this moment for what it is.
The middle portion of the song underlines this point: “In the Flowers” has one wonderful trick up its sleeve, and that is the shift from 3/4 to 2/4 when the thomping bass drum fades in. That moment is exhilarating, has a jubilant arrangement, and always makes me smile, but it lasts for a scant 16 or so measures, before the coda of the middle section begins, signaling a return to the 3/4 arrangement.
“In the Flowers” relies too much on its rhythmic shift. I love songs like this, where a move to a different rhythm or tempo feels organic and propels the song in a direction you didn’t think it would move! Sadly, “In the Flowers” doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere until that rhythmic shift. Not to say that it occupies that rarefied place of STILLNESS that some composers or groups manifest (Morton Feldman comes to mind), but that the experience feels so unpolished, so tossed off, that I feel like the band is merely vamping for a time until we’re lulled into a state of desire. I want to revel in the time before and after the middle section, but there is too much clutter: extraneous noises, dense and bright reverb, backwards reverb on Avey Tare’s vocals. It’s sonically frustrating (sadly much like the rest of the record).
I’ve created an understanding of what I think was trying to be accomplished, but the actual experience sadly falls short of that each and every time I listen.
For some context: I’ve loved Animal Collective ever since “Here Comes the Indian.” So I certainly had expectations, even hopes for this record! Maybe I’ll come back to it in a year and find the record as a whole less abrasive, but right now I am completely baffled at the media’s fixation on this being The Best Album of The Year So Far. It came out in January! Of course it’s better than most stuff t
hat came out already.
To reiterate: some very good songs. But I can’t help but compare this record to Here Comes the Indian, to Sung Tongs, to Campfire Songs (my favorite!), and this one feels so less crafted, so tossed off comparatively.
I did listen to it about 15-20 times, though. There’s something about being well-versed in a band or composer’s language that allows you to willingly subject yourself to a piece of theirs that you don’t particularly like. When I’m not listening to the record, I find myself wanting to like it. Every time someone off-handedly mentions the amazingness of the record, I have the urge to go back and listen, to try and see if I missed something. I’ve since learned.
Merriweather Post Pavilion is not my favorite record, but it’s good!
A Subset Column on CDs:
Am I the only one who hates Bonus Material? An album gets rereleased, remastered, etc. and the label/artists decide to give us Bonus Material. I understand the marketing behind such a thing: make the fans who already own the album buy it again.
This is perfectly understandable when tacked onto a film. There are menus. The bonus material, deleted scenes, etc. must be selected in order to be accessed. But with CDs, there is no choice. One must stop the CD in order to NOT experience the bonus tracks. Obnoxious. If there could’ve been some way to disengage the bonus material, to be able to simply listen to the record without another batch of lesser material beginning, I would have been happy, but instead the label/artist compromise the purity of the product.
Recordings provide no visual. There is nothing for us to hold onto, nothing that occupies space with a recording. We found with album artwork and the jewel-case, though, that music was somewhat successfully captured. Ornate housings of an experience-intangible. I’ve since sold all of my compact discs, but I do fondly remember sifting through my collection, finding that favored case, and marveling at the power it held. The relationship that the disc had to the Album was direct.
When the Bonus Material was added the power of the packaging weakened. The CD was now just a carrier of data, holding not just the album, but this other stuff, too. And not only that, but the two could not be disconnected. When the final song finished playing, YOU HAD TO PRESS STOP. This (not always) intricately crafted artistic experience was diminished due to its proximity to material not intended to be a part.
My need for the compact disc and packaging to be that wonderfully direct link to the experience of the album went so far as to disallow CD singles to appear in my collection. The idea that the same packaging was used to deliver just two songs ruined the illusion. I even had trouble holding onto EPs because of this!!
Nevertheless, I am finally free of such problems. Betty Davis’ self-titled album is now called “Betty Davis”. The bonus material released with that album “Betty Davis (Bonus Material)”. Thanks audio software applications!
First things first: we are not a record label.
Times are tight here at Records. Time is tight, moreso. Cary is incredibly busy right now, and I’m currently spending a good 
deal of time interning at an audio mastering facility in NYC. What’s nice about this situation for me is that I get over 3 hours of train riding for my commute, which means that I get a TON of time to listen to music.
When I was living in Arizona my big time for listening was my 20 minute bikeride to and from school. This was adequate, but involved terrible headphones and, because of the nature of my activity, I was not in a place to listen to music with dynamics or anything without a sense of vibrancy and motion.
BUT NOW! When I’m terribly exhausted from my day in New York, I can sit on the train, stare out into the fleeting daylight (or my own reflection due to the night), and listen to more, well, contenplative stuff. Like Scott Walker! And Henri Dutilleux! Hooray!
Scott Walker – The Drift (2006) is excellent. Exhausting. A lot of textural work in the arrangements. I found myself desiring something with a bit more motion. The compositions feel like set pieces for the words. Almost as if he wrote the words, set the words to a melody, then simply decorated the sonic space behind the melody. This technique works wonderfully and creates some amazing moments, but I honestly wish the record had more variety. Then again, I’ve only given the record a handful of listens (only once all the way through) and maybe there is more subtlety than I’ve picked up on. I may write more on this soon.
Henri Dutilleux – Tout Un Monde Lointain is also excellent. It’s a Cello Concerto from 1970. I love Dutilleux. I love his melodies. Perfectly pleasing, yet wonderfully angular. I’ve been moving backwards through this piece. 5 movements, each one about 4 or 5 minutes long, so not a very exhausting piece. But I started listening backwards. And I love it. I’ve made it to the 3rd Movement (Houles). Delicious. Sadly not much more comes to mind. Still a good deal of details to catch with this one. So might write more about this soon, too!
Otherwise, updates will be minor in the coming weeks. Sad! But they will exist. We will persist! This Records is forever.
I find it easy to point out what is wrong in something. Even in the things I love – I sometimes slip into simply pointing to the experience of the thing: “it is small, that is bad – why would one want a thing like that to be small? It should be larger.” This comes so clearly from a state of desire. I want a thing that is similar, but larger. There is no bad in such a case. In past I’ve too quickly made critical remarks about a thing in such a state of desire. It feels childish now. If I can’t find the good in something from now on, I’m going to chalk it up to desire. I’ve been surprised too many times in past by things I, in a more distant past, disdained with the whole of my body. I will henceforth do my best to portray my dislike for something as a dissatisfaction. (This also allows for the belief that those that create a thing were hopefully in a state of mind of enjoying that which they created).
This is about music, though, this Records. Not just things. It feels fresher to listen again without Bad. Way better.
