QUOTES by Phil Elverum
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
I am not satisfied with the ending of 'Mount Eerie' the album, so maybe by calling myself that, I am attempting to elaborate on the ending.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I'm actually not fussy. I enjoy getting into it and talking about anything, really. It feels good.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I can't bring myself to release an instrumental album because I feel like I want some meat on the bone. Something to chew on, lyrically and content-wise.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I love things like the Criterion Collection DVDs. I think those are really well done. I like how far you can push the deluxe-ness of things like that.
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Every tour is different. Sometimes I'll get a band together and sometimes it's just me.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
After I made 'A Crow Looked at Me,' I remember people saying things to me like, 'You've made a beautiful tribute to Genevieve.' And I felt like, no! No no no, I haven't. I made a tribute to my own destruction and desolation. This is not a portrait of her. That's not who she was. She wasn't just a person who died.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I like the experience being in the audience and being overwhelmed by sound, like thick, oppressive loud sound and distortion.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I just play under the name Mt. Eerie. I started doing that in 2003 and I've pretty much been doing that since then.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
It's a beautiful idea to focus on how everything is temporary and always in flux. It may feel bad now, but it will feel good later, and vice versa. To write about those things brings this satisfying feeling as a creative person.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
It would be amazing to write a song that could be sung 100 years from now by a teenage girl and still be relevant to her - that's a dream of songwriting, maybe.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
It's easy to get swept up in the day to day ridiculous things that are in the news. They're not meaningless, they're legitimate and worth being engaged with. But it's easy to get overwhelmed and swept up and forget what real life feels like.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
All the books on my shelves, when I would go to them to look for help with my anguish, they all just seemed so crass. They didn't get it. Those books don't understand. Nobody understands.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
Being a musician means I am 'hanging out' a lot, like driving on tour or being at a show or whatever, so maybe there's more time to interact with peers and develop jokes.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I have a hard time working with other people with my own songs because I have a pretty complete idea of how it should be. It's usually just me multi-tracking which is better than coercing someone into doing my idea.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I've sort of accidentally put myself in this position where I opened up the story of my life, and of course people want to reciprocate and open up to me. I'm OK at it, I don't make people feel worse, but it's strange to find myself in this role, all of a sudden, that I never would have pursued.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I am drawn to cold, desolate places rather than Hawaii. I actually love Hawaii too, but I tend to go to Iceland or Norway or Northern Japan - northern places for whatever reason. Which aren't necessarily the best places to tour.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I wanted to make a record that would transcend the bad, hard feelings of a love relationship not working out, to make something that metabolized it into something useful and good.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I buy some black metal records kind of blindly, and I end up really liking maybe 30% of them. There's a lot of duds, for me at least, in black metal. I have kind of picky tastes about it.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
These people that worked with my dad doing landscaping were in a grunge band so the music on the cover of Rolling Stone was in a very real way connected to people practicing in the woods near my house while I was home doing my homework.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I got into Nirvana, and it was my sort of awakening into the idea that music could be like rough and crazy and local. And so I started to realize that there were bands playing in my town, Anacortes.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I'm mostly fine with anyone using my music for whatever. Everything's just compost that gets reused.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
It's nice to have a band that can adapt to whatever show we're in, so we can play on a big stage or a house show.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
Life here (in the Pacific Northwest, not in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland or the chain of buildings connecting them but in the rest of the place, out west and east from the north-south I-5 river) can sometimes feel like a half-dream, half-myth.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I listen to all kinds of music and sometimes I try to do something that's referential to an era or a genre, but it still sounds like me.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I want to create a life that is just healthy and peaceful - an enclave, really, of retreat. It's not helpful for the big picture. It's totally selfish to run away like that.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
The Beach Boys were my favorite. I use to listen to their hits over and over, especially 'In My Room' and 'Don't Worry Baby.' There's something really sad about 'Don't Worry Baby.' Even though it's just a California song about racing cars, the melody is really sad. There's melancholy in it.
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People used to assume I was a serious/sad person because of my music for some reason.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
Even when I was calling myself the Microphones I only really ever played new songs... because I feel, like, a pretty strong connection to the song when I'm performing it.
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My shows have never been related to my albums at all because my albums have all kinds of crazy instruments and stuff that could never be performed live. I'm used to people expecting this 12-piece band to show up with three drum sets and an accordion.
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I'm open to making any kind of music, or maybe making no music ever again. That's also an option, always. Who knows what'll happen.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
When I first started recording music, I was actually singing about microphones, equipment, recording.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I don't really see myself in a lineage which is fine with me. Sometimes I do try to explicitly copy an exact song, an arrangement, a sound - and I fail. And so you can't even tell I was trying to do that thing. It makes sense in my own head but I'm incapable of copying.
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Clear Moon' is more... clear I guess! It's more round-sounding and it's slightly gentler. 'Ocean Roar' is more challenging and weird and darker and heavier - the idea was for it to feel like a thick fog laying on your head, versus a clear sky with the moon in it.
Quote by -Phil Elverum
I'm really nervous about coming off as exclusive or elitist. At the same time, I recognize that when I put out vinyl or an expensive coffee table book not everyone can afford it or listen to it.
Quote by -Phil Elverum