Phil Elverum will bring his Mount Eerie project, formally known as Microphones, back to Buffalo this spring on Thursday, April 17th with a performance at Babeville's Ninth Ward. Mount Eerie most recently played the Buffalo venue back in September of 2012. The prolific musician was quite busy in 2013, releasing a string of albums, including November's Pre-Human Ideas. Tickets for the show will go on sale this Friday, March 28th, for $13 in advance/$15 day of.

2012 brought in a flood of diverse and superb music in the national outlook, but it was also a prolific time that gave rise to a thriving local music scene. On top of all that, Buffalo racked in some incredible live acts and has seemingly put itself back on the map as a regular tour bus trail-marker. Yes, year-end lists are indeed the vanity of vanities when it comes to music and entertainment commentary, but let's face it, they're fun as hell and fill a certain journalistic void that is pretty harmless compared to the Facebook Year in Review feature. So without further ado, here are my favorites of the year:

In the music video for Mount Eerie’s “The Place Lives” frontman Phil Elverum walks through the Washington wilderness poking his head around, exploring what he seemingly already knows like the back of his thirty-four-year-old hand. A cell phone camera barely recording in 720p follows the musician formerly known as The Microphones as he comes face to face with his muse, Mt. Erie, a stone-faced summit barely exceeding 1,200 feet. He heats up water on a camping stove that he mixes with dirt (coffee?) which he pours in the earth ending the strange (meaningless?) experiment. Oddly, there is no better way Elverum could display his fascination (fetishization?) with the place of Anacortes, Washington than he does in the first ever music video of his 14-year career. It's a place he was born and raised, and loved enough to stay and build a studio. A place he loves enough to write about time and time again; a place he holds in higher esteem than bustling cities like Seattle, a mere 40-someodd miles from the island. A place he loves enough that he depicts its scenery on most of the items for sale at his merch table. And since Mount Eerie changed his name from The Microphones back in 2003 he has declared the place his beloved, so much that when he tours he packs the million-ton mountain into his suitcase as a traveling evangelist does his concordance study Bible.


Last night Elverum unpacked his baggage and approached the mic circled by a surprisingly packed Ninth Ward and said, “Hi, we’re Mount Eerie. We’re from out West.” The man carries a gentle, yet self-assured stage presence, looking the audience in the eyes, perplexed as to how we all got here. After a little sound checking, Elverum and his four accompanying members break out in a droning, low-key track off the first of two full-length albums the musician has put out this year, Clear Moon, entitled “House Shape”. The track bustles with confounded organ germinating against sprinkled cymbal clinks. Elverums voice, which doesn’t enter the track until two minutes in, can barely be heard amongst the shadowy ensemble: “A separate way of seeing / A separate way of breathing it in / A lost world separate from the usual barely meaningful waking and dreaming.” There is no upbeat crowd-pleaser to open with. Mount Eerie begins and ends with an overflowing vacuum of dimly-lit poetics which becomes increasingly vital in driving the murky mix of distortion, sonorous drums, 12-string electric riffs, and organ blips.
The next track presented is “The Place Lives”, the aforementioned track off Clear Moon. While the rest of the band shows little to no animation on stage in their steady dedication to technics, this makes way for the subdued reactions emitted by Elverum himself. He shakes his head quickly as he lulls a verse. He closes his eyes during another. He cradles his guitar diversly and tilts it slowly during “Lone Bell” in an attempt to manipulate sound/mind/space. At the center of the band lies a cluster of plastic logs with tatters of orange fabric illuminated by a light inside. A dim fire, the final touch in anthropomorphizing Mt. Erie and its wilderness, as we are camped hundreds of miles away from the shores of our Erie. 
The musicians finally deviate from Clear Moon to play “Who?” a track off 2008’s Lost Wisdom. “Who?” is a downcast folk song and one of Elverum’s greatest lyrical accomplishments. Elverum harmonizes along side his bassist: “What do I want with my home now that I’m gone? / I want the shades drawn.” And suddenly, 8 tracks into the set, Elverum declares he has two songs left sending them into the title track off the second LP released this year, Ocean Roar. This song is slightly darker, but somehow allows the show to end on a redemptive, albeit disappointing note. 


Altogether, the performance was satisfying, but felt hurried, and a little frustrated at times. At the start of the show Elverum asked continually for treble to be turned down in the bass, and wasn’t really getting the results he wanted. For the obsessive, this might have colored the mood of subsequent songs. Although the composition of the songs were well-furnished, they seemed suffocated at times, especially for a venue known to render such sprawled-out techniques even more intimate. 
Still, in some ways the show was one of the most enthralling experiences I've had in some time. Mount Eerie is a cerebral force in the shrinking experimental-folk stratosphere, and just as with any live performance, there is often an internalization of principles and images in the music to some degree. This can result in an abstract kind of experience where the intellect comes second to imagination. Experiencing Elverum's presence up-close, it was hard not to think of him as the Thoreau of the Pacific Northwest. Mt. Erie as his Walden Pond, simple and central, yet mysteriously sacred and enveloping. It all reflects back to the relationship of his art and place, which Mount Eerie has devoted itself to.

In a 2009 interview with The Believer Elverum talked about place: “Towns are all generic because if everyone is going to move soon, who cares if it’s an Olive Garden or something more permanent-feeling? The lack of “home” that most people feel is fucked.” If anything, the most important aspect to Mount Eerie’s performance is the significance of this message, which was clearly exerted Sunday night. He carries his song because, as he states, “all things in the world are singing a song, reciting a poem, inaudibly, to their surroundings, to the things they encounter.”
If you regretably missed Mount Eerie last night you can still catch him as he plays shows in Toronto tonight at The Great Hall and Syracuse tomorrow (9/11) at Badlands. 

Whether it be as The Microphones or as Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum has been a continually engaging artist for some time. Tonight, he will be bringing his impressive body of work to the Ninth Ward, promoting his most recent album, Ocean Roar. 

Delving through the new releases each week has really brought home the archival influence on much of new music being released today. This trend is something Simon Reynolds, in his book Retromania, explores at length with a somewhat ambivalent tone. The question of course being that if we have become so referential, are we pushing the envelope as fully as we could? In listening to songs like this week's Les Sins and AlunaGeorge tracks-both heavily reminiscent of other music-I am starting to think that artists are doing some great things within this space. While both tracks are not particularly groundbreaking, they are still fun and sound, ultimately, fresh, despite their being steeped, primarily, in the 90s'. On the other end of this is Mount Eerie's new song, which draws from the shoegaze of the same decade. Regardless of what is being referenced, this is some really great new music out there drawing from older music. Here are 5 new songs to listen to this weekend.

Lightning Bolt - "King Candy:" Lightning Bolt's music can be difficult to describe due to how visceral it is. In a strange way, the loud volume and the way in which they do not let up, even for a moment, calls for one to be more present as a listener. This is because it is both very loud and also incredibly intricate You cannot simply sit back and do other things while listening to songs like "King Candy." Instead, you are called to engage with its winding structure and quickly shifting sections.

Les Sins - "Fetch:" Les Sins is Toro Y Moi's dance side project. "Fetch" off of Les Sins' upcoming 7", which will be released on Caribou's Daphni label. Very different from Toro Y Moi, Les Sins features Chaz Bundick working through 90s' house and trance music.The low key track winds through a consistent groove and features a distorted vocal loop.

Ombre - "Tormentas:" Ombre is Helado Negro and Juliana Barwick, label mates on Asthmatic Kitty. " Haunting and sparse, "Tormentas" is reminiscent of earlier Grizzly Bear with gentle instrumentation coiling around quiet vocals. The wind instruments featured in the song's middle section has a strangely reassuring effect and the song is somewhat comforting for being so spooky.

Mount Eerie - "Ocean Roar:" A psycedelic song off of Mount Eerie's forthcoming album, "Ocean Roar" features a echoing female vocals and reverb heavy guitar. Short with no real shift in tempo or structure, the song's simplicity is poignant and lends a tragic quality to the whole thing. Be sure to catch Mount Eerie at the Ninth Ward in September.

AlunaGeorge - "Your Drums, Your Love:" AlunaGeorge has been quickly gaining press after releasing a debut EP in the spring. As is the case with their other songs, on "Your Drums, Your Love" the slinky vocals of Aluna Francis are paired with late night glitchy beats of producer George Reid. The result is a catchy pop song with a late 90's feel. Expect a full length out from this band in 2013.

That is all for this week. Check back next week when I might drink more coffee and try being funny again. Also, did you guys see that new Grimes video yet? Shit is weeeiiird.

Mount Eerie, the current project of former Microphones runner Phil Elverum, will be stopping in Buffalo on Sunday, September 9th with a performance at Babeville's Ninth Ward.  Since dropping the Microphones moniker back in 2003, Elevrum's Mount Eeerie has contiuned his lo-fi folk sound that defined his work since the late 1990s.  Earlier this year, Mount Eerie released the solid Clear Moon, his first of two albums set for 2012.  White Stag, Clear Moon's follow up, will drop this fall.  In the mean time, tickets to Mount Eerie's show went on sale this past Friday for $12.