Crashing Through Salal - Microphones in 2020
I didn't know about Phil Elverum when I graduated from Anacortes High School in 2003. I had no idea I had crashed through the same Salal bushes and driven the same curve around Heart Lake as a great American folk musician.
But I do now. I've spent the last month with Phil's latest album, "The Microphones in 2020". The record consists of one 44 minute song. It's a meditation on Phil's life-long relationship with music, but it's also something more -- an ode, or a lament, on the fragile experience of being a human. And if we need anything in 2020, we need artists that help us navigate our uncertainty and fragility.
While I didn't know Phil growing up, I knew his brother.
I spent my early teenage years saturated in evangelical pop culture. There was a poster in youth group that suggested Christian alternatives to "secular" musicians. If you were a fan of Dave Matthews, the poster recommended replacing him with Third Day. You could dip your toe in the devil's music without getting too wet. And I did dip my toe. I went to evangelical Christian concerts, I bought evangelical music, I read evangelical books. And in 2004 when I turned 18, I voted for the evangelical President: George W Bush.
Around the same time I started attending Skagit Valley Community College. It was a 30 minute commute from Anacortes. Phil's brother was also taking classes at the college. We started ridesharing. I used to shuttle him in my Nissan Hardbody, past the casino, and across cabbage fields -- slipping through pockets of fog, and flocks of geese. I would often subject Phil's brother to the latest Christian pop-punk albums, hoping he might discover Jesus in the tight basslines. Even though Phil's brother never found any first-century Jewish rabbis in my stereo, I did witness a miracle. Despite being in a family of musical geniuses, Phil's brother never said anything negative about my music, he never took offense, instead he showed me acceptance.
Now it's 2020 and in Phil’s words “nothing stays the same“. I don't listen to Christian pop-punk anymore. I don't ride past geese anymore with Phil's brother. But I am finding that same sort of acceptance in Phil Elverum's latest album. "Microphones in 2020" is a work about "standing on the ground looking around", a commentary on human existence in all its paradoxes and uncertainties. But instead of devolving into complete despair, or reaching for vapid platitudes, Microphones does something different: it faces the storm of existence bare-chested with eyes wide open. It accepts reality as it comes, sometimes even with gentleness, and perhaps hope.
"When I took my shirt off in the yard I meant it, and it's still off. I'm still standing in the weather looking for meaning in the giant meaningless days of love and loss repeatedly waterfalling down. And the sun relentlessly rises still." - Phil Elvrum
Bandcamp Link: https://pwelverumandsun.bandcamp.com/album/microphones-in-2020
