Mt. Eerie? More like "Mt. Sucky"!
As you probably conjectured based on the post title, the Mt. Eerie show was a disappointment. More on that shortly.
I started the drinking early on Wednesday; I had a beer after dinner (the stock is getting dangerously low; I think I'm down to a few Dos Equis and Coronas, and I've been out of Shiner for a week—it's pathetic) and then a margarita (I made a batch last weekend; I'm trying to find a recipe I like and then perfect it). Jeff still had his rental car from his brief business trip to Austin, and since he was picking me up from the GSC happy hour to go to the show at Mary Jane's, I decided to walk to Brian O'Neil's. The weather was hotter and the walk longer than I had originally conjectured, but it was fun for a change, and it meant that at no point did i have to be sober enough to drive home.
I didn't go overboard, really, but I was feeling pretty nice: three beers and two T&T's at the happy hour, and then two more beers at the show. The happy hour was a bit sparse while I was there and just seemed to be picking up when we left.
We timed things perfectly to catch Mt. Eerie. Mary Jane's was sold out; a first since I've been going there. This guy got up on stage and did a sound check, and then said, very sheepishly, "I'm going to start now." He had to repeat it a few times before the audience heard him.
A little background is in order. Phil Elvrum recorded a goodly number of albums under the moniker "The Microphones" with whoever he happened to have around and makes experimental, highly textured low-fi indie pop. It's frequently beautiful, kind of weird, but the man is capable of writing a great song. His The Glow, Pt. 2 was Pitchfork's album of the year for 2001. In early 2003, he released Mt. Eerie, an allegorical concept album. He then announced that he would be performing under the Mt. Eerie name. This year, at the start of this tour, for some reason, he decided that he was now Phil Elverum instead of being Phil Elvrum.
Out of the three of us at the show that had at least a passing familiarity with his work, none of us knew any of the songs he performed. Many of them were thirty seconds or a minute long. It was absolutely absurd, and pretty much awful, and this on the heels of glowing reviews by people who'd been to his other shows. I don't know if it was the crowd, the venue, or Phil, but it was a huge shame. I expected so much more. A few songs in, he completely lost the audience, who had started talking. Halfway through the set, I lost interest in buying an album from him, then, in the end, decided that it'd be worth my $12 to have an excuse to talk to the man.
Me: "Should I buy Song Islands (a singles compilation) or Don't Wake Me Up (his first album on K Records)?"
Phil: "Um..."
long awkward pause
Phil: "I guess Song Islands."
Me: OK.
Explosions in the Sky played next. They did their atmospheric, instrumental thing, and it sounded like so many other bands of that genre that I'd heard lately. It's nice, but I wasn't particularly in the mood for it.
I returned home, thankful that I hadn't had to drive, and opened the album. I didn't get Song Islands. I got Island Songs which is the Japanese version—sort of. The tracklist is about 90% similar, but some of the songs are titled differently, and some of the songs are entirely different. The eccentricity of it all was maddening. The man's musical catalogue is just impossible to get your head around, with albums taking the name of songs on other albums, songs whose titles differ from other songs by one word, limited release vinyl albums with hand painted covers; it's just crazy.
But I put the CD in, and it was beautiful. I still wish his set hadn't sucked, though.
I watched Mean Girls with Stephanie tonight. It was surprisingly enjoyable (until it got preachy), a feature I attribute to Tina Fey—sweet, beautiful Tina Fey.
Also, Time Warner Houston has finally entered the late nineties by making their Digital Video Recorder (generic Tivo) service available. Tivo's kind of like the Macintosh of the category; I feel bad for not buying their superior product, but this is almost half the price, and I didn't have to throw down a couple hundred bucks on the box, too. For $7 a month, Time Warner's product is to cheap to pass up, even if it's inferior. That doesn't stop me from feeling like a sellout, though.
It's really sweet, though. I don't have to worry about being home in time for shows I want to watch. I can skip commercials. I can pause while I'm on the phone. It's one of those enabling technologies that I love, the kind of thing that you don't appreciate until you have it and wonder how you ever did without it, like broadband, the iPod, a laptop, a cell phone... and this is just the first day. Sweet.
I started the drinking early on Wednesday; I had a beer after dinner (the stock is getting dangerously low; I think I'm down to a few Dos Equis and Coronas, and I've been out of Shiner for a week—it's pathetic) and then a margarita (I made a batch last weekend; I'm trying to find a recipe I like and then perfect it). Jeff still had his rental car from his brief business trip to Austin, and since he was picking me up from the GSC happy hour to go to the show at Mary Jane's, I decided to walk to Brian O'Neil's. The weather was hotter and the walk longer than I had originally conjectured, but it was fun for a change, and it meant that at no point did i have to be sober enough to drive home.
I didn't go overboard, really, but I was feeling pretty nice: three beers and two T&T's at the happy hour, and then two more beers at the show. The happy hour was a bit sparse while I was there and just seemed to be picking up when we left.
We timed things perfectly to catch Mt. Eerie. Mary Jane's was sold out; a first since I've been going there. This guy got up on stage and did a sound check, and then said, very sheepishly, "I'm going to start now." He had to repeat it a few times before the audience heard him.
A little background is in order. Phil Elvrum recorded a goodly number of albums under the moniker "The Microphones" with whoever he happened to have around and makes experimental, highly textured low-fi indie pop. It's frequently beautiful, kind of weird, but the man is capable of writing a great song. His The Glow, Pt. 2 was Pitchfork's album of the year for 2001. In early 2003, he released Mt. Eerie, an allegorical concept album. He then announced that he would be performing under the Mt. Eerie name. This year, at the start of this tour, for some reason, he decided that he was now Phil Elverum instead of being Phil Elvrum.
Out of the three of us at the show that had at least a passing familiarity with his work, none of us knew any of the songs he performed. Many of them were thirty seconds or a minute long. It was absolutely absurd, and pretty much awful, and this on the heels of glowing reviews by people who'd been to his other shows. I don't know if it was the crowd, the venue, or Phil, but it was a huge shame. I expected so much more. A few songs in, he completely lost the audience, who had started talking. Halfway through the set, I lost interest in buying an album from him, then, in the end, decided that it'd be worth my $12 to have an excuse to talk to the man.
Me: "Should I buy Song Islands (a singles compilation) or Don't Wake Me Up (his first album on K Records)?"
Phil: "Um..."
long awkward pause
Phil: "I guess Song Islands."
Me: OK.
Explosions in the Sky played next. They did their atmospheric, instrumental thing, and it sounded like so many other bands of that genre that I'd heard lately. It's nice, but I wasn't particularly in the mood for it.
I returned home, thankful that I hadn't had to drive, and opened the album. I didn't get Song Islands. I got Island Songs which is the Japanese version—sort of. The tracklist is about 90% similar, but some of the songs are titled differently, and some of the songs are entirely different. The eccentricity of it all was maddening. The man's musical catalogue is just impossible to get your head around, with albums taking the name of songs on other albums, songs whose titles differ from other songs by one word, limited release vinyl albums with hand painted covers; it's just crazy.
But I put the CD in, and it was beautiful. I still wish his set hadn't sucked, though.
I watched Mean Girls with Stephanie tonight. It was surprisingly enjoyable (until it got preachy), a feature I attribute to Tina Fey—sweet, beautiful Tina Fey.
Also, Time Warner Houston has finally entered the late nineties by making their Digital Video Recorder (generic Tivo) service available. Tivo's kind of like the Macintosh of the category; I feel bad for not buying their superior product, but this is almost half the price, and I didn't have to throw down a couple hundred bucks on the box, too. For $7 a month, Time Warner's product is to cheap to pass up, even if it's inferior. That doesn't stop me from feeling like a sellout, though.
It's really sweet, though. I don't have to worry about being home in time for shows I want to watch. I can skip commercials. I can pause while I'm on the phone. It's one of those enabling technologies that I love, the kind of thing that you don't appreciate until you have it and wonder how you ever did without it, like broadband, the iPod, a laptop, a cell phone... and this is just the first day. Sweet.
posted by L. Maxwell Ward at 1:29 AM
