Phil Elvrum is the veritable Walt Whitman of music: He's hermetic, possibly celibate, and immutably happy. His songs celebrate the sensual matter of life, and rarely fall back upon narrative clichés like simple depression or heartbreak in the conventional sense. Like Whitman's poetry, Elvrum's lyrics are often as elementary as a child's jejune rambling, and yet, in their simplicity, they're sturdy, sophisticated, and poignantly inquisitive. And unlike many of today's indie gurus, Phil isn't a gimmick: Despite epic songs that extend to multiple tracks and varying "parts", and a challenging concept album that attempted to conquer the galaxy, Elvrum's quavering emotionality never seems less than genuine.
Of course, if you're not a sucker for sentimentally pregnant music, The Microphones might be lost on you: Once, after hearing "Solar System", Mt. Eerie's fleeting 3½ minute retreat to pop clarity, a friend of mine remarked, "Anybody can do that." I'm afraid not. Maybe it was my fault for playing him the song out of context, but to me, after the 17-minute percussive hysteria that precedes it, Mirah's gentle repetition of the line, "I know you're out there," seems among the most serene pleasures on Earth.
On The Microphones' website last year, Elvrum solicited fans in Norway who might be willing to board him for the sunless winter. When he found a taker, he packed up his things and went, intending to work and write in seclusion. Given this kind of unpredictable tendency, the release of Live in Japan, February 19th, 21st, and 22nd, 2003 isn't surprising-- especially considering The Microphones' long legacy of rarities, B-sides and Beck-like fakeout releases that seem to shun "proper follow-up" status. Still, a big part of The Microphones' music is that it inhabits a dark nether of studio wizardry; to strip away Elvrum's sound-transforming production is to only view half of the picture.
Discounting winsome covers of "Silent Night" and "My Favorite Things", which elicit some of the liveliest crowd responses, Live in Japan consists of entirely new material, but the album sounds only vaguely like The Microphones we've come to know and love through a deluge of extraordinary studio releases. Elvrum's brittle voice and songwriting is as moving as ever, but represented live, these new songs wear thin and fail to carry the emotional weight they likely would have if set amongst the field-recorded effects, cavernous drum sounds and late-night radio buzz of The Microphones' transportive studio projects. Additionally, where many live albums sound more organic than their studio counterparts, the inverse is true here. It's not that Live in Japan isn't intimate; it's that practically nothing could match the intimacy we've come to expect from records like It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water and The Glow, Pt. 2.
This aside, what differentiates Live in Japan from The Microphones' previous work is the emergence of a subtle blues bent; songs like "After N. Young", "I Love You So Much!", and "Thanksgiving" hint at a more conventional direction. But despite Elvrum's reported social monasticism, these songs remain paradoxically confessional, as reflected in lines like, "As you can see/ Having descended the hill/ I still look like me/ I still howl like Phil/ And forever will," and in heartened cries like, "I want my own wind to blow." In these confessions, the point of this record becomes clear: to separate "Phil" from "The Microphones."
That, of course, is a separation not many fans will take kindly to, as most still consider The Microphones a solo studio project with a revolving-door policy not unlike Robert Pollard's Guided by Voices. Nonetheless, this beguiling division hints that Elvrum has refocused his artistic vision on new vistas. Given this, and that these songs originated over a year ago-- since which time the band has broken temporarily asunder and reconstituted with an amended name-- it's uncertain whether this material will ever undergo the studio wringer. And even if it does, there's no telling whether Elvrum is determined to branch off his sound in some unforeseen direction. Regardless, he ought to consider giving these songs some kind of studio treatment, as they would seem to generate another astonishing LP.
