mount eerie at the fremont abbey
 mount eerie at the fremont abbey. more pics [flickr] |
- The Fremont Abbey is just a beautiful place to see a show. On Saturday night, when we arrived zipping up from the EMP, they had candles and strings of lights on the floor, folding chairs arranged around a small stage, and a smoking volcano in the back next to the concession stand. The space, formerly occupied by a Lutheran Church and situated in the upper reaches of Fremont — the part where snow sticks on the ground, the Buckaroo has a boarded up window, and more insulated from the odd evening tranfsormation of eclecticville to barcrawltopia — is large and has a high ribbed ceiling. The amplified sound fills it up, wanders around, and makes itself comfortable.
- The above is helped by the audience, who sit hushed poses through all Mount Eerie‘s set. As we sneak in and pull up floor pillows of our own, the show has already started and I’m suddenly relieved that I didn’t have to explain to my friend what we were seeing ahead of time. First, because I’ve seen tons of Microphones/Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum shows and they’re all pretty different. Sometimes he’s teaching a Japanese band how to be his back-up band on the spot. Other times he’s getting the audience to sing along for a recording session (“Singers” is likely to be my one and only career record credit). Or maybe it will feature Julie Dorion singing from their collaborative album, “Lost Wisdom”. On top of that, the material is almost always new, from a forthcoming record or from something that just showed up on the merch table. So no matter how many years you’ve had the bits of “the Moon” been stuck in your head, consider yourself insanely lucky if you’re at the First Unitarian Church when he plays a reworked version of it [youtube] .
Secondly, I realize that if I had to describe it, it might sound downright awful like “it’s this really quiet, sensitive-seeming guy who sings his free-verse, non-rhyming poetry about nature and the meaning of life in alternative keys over distorted guitar while fans soak it up with reverent attention.” While that’s accurate, it misses how well all of that fits together into something movingly compelling. Description and structural unpredictability aside, the really certain thing is that however it turns out, it will be its own kind of beautiful that the crowd will be so silently attentive that they might forget to laugh at the little self-effacing jokes thrown in between songs. - Phil just published another really nice-looking book called Dawn through Buenaventura Press. It’s a lovingly crafted object, a small volume bound in birch-like wood. Square photographs are squirreled away inside the front cover and a CD is in the back. In between are journal entries from the 2002-2003 winter living above the arctic circle in a cabin in Norway. I haven’t read much beyond the introduction, but I think this coincides with the “getting out of the romance” phase, where “the Microphones” went away and “Mount Eerie” emerged. For a fan, reading this source material is irresistible, a little terrifying and/or intimidating, and definitely worth the approximately $30. [pwelverumandsun]
- The What the Heck Fest has been scheduled for 17-19 July. Tickets will be on sale soon; so if you’re looking for a reason to go to Anacortes, add it to your calendar now and buy early.
