The Glow Pt. 2 (2001) The Microphones

 Written by Meenakshi Nirmalan

I first came across The Microphones in 2020, just before starting sixth form. Browsing through Soundcloud, it came up in my recommendations. I only listened to I Want Wind to Blow and didn’t like it. I found the twang of the guitar grating and disliked the way the track was mixed. There are two guitars playing different parts simultaneously and I found the slight syncopation between the two guitars irritating. I also thought the bass drum sounded too echoey. I didn’t listen to the track more than a couple of times and did not look into The Microphones further. However, in March 2021, a friend of mine sent me two tracks from the album. I Want Wind to Blow and The Moon. With an open mind, I listened to the tracks and enjoyed them. The first time I listened to The Microphones, I deemed the production quality poor. However, in retrospect I understand that much of the album’s charm derives from its lo-fi style. The faint crackle of the recording equipment picking up on outside noise makes the album feel more human. Moreover, the slight out-of-sync nature of the guitars don’t sound like a flaw anymore. It creates a conversational feel, as if they are bouncing off each other. I cannot imagine The Glow Pt. 2 done any other way.

The Glow Pt. 2 has 20 songs, the majority of which are short in duration. In this space, all the songs say exactly what needs to be said: nothing more, nothing less. The tracks on this album all have different sounds. Some tracks are eerie instrumentals of noise, some tracks consist simply of voice and acoustic guitar and some tracks feature a range of instruments. Quite often, a track will swing from one sound to another. Despite the range in texture, The Glow Pt. 2 ultimately has a consistent feel; the songs are all woven together to form a patchwork bricolage. Moreover, the drums are played in a way where it is difficult to distinguish each separate part of the kit. All the different pitches of the tom drums and the snare merge. The drums aren’t resonant and the cymbals aren’t crisp; the sound is on the echoey side. However, this creates a warm and fuzzy, homemade feel, characteristic of lo-fi, indie folk.

The Moon is an incredibly moving track and arguably, is my favourite. The song explores the vastness of the universe and where individuals fit into this. I had it playing on repeat when I was 17 on a school trip to the Lake District; for me the song is now evocative of the hills and lakes of the English landscape. Being in sublime nature makes you realise how small yet interconnected you are to everything. I rediscovered The Moon recently. The penultimate time I was at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh, I just sat on the sand, looking out at the waves, listening to this track on repeat. It was a grounding experience. The song starts with two guitars, gently strumming, echoing each other. Then after a minute, you are hit with the full intensity of all the instruments: drums, guitars, vocals, synths, horns. The horns have a distinct melancholic feel, in their descending sequence. I also love how Phil Elverum’s vocals are soft and somewhat drowned out by the drums, guitars and the synths. There’s a certain intensity found in the softness of the vocals. It feels intimate, as if you’re being let in on a nugget of knowledge that perhaps you shouldn’t have access to. The ending of the song is poignant. Elverum sings: “but the Moon just stared back at me / And in its light, I saw my two feet on the ground”. This displays how looking at celestial objects results in the grounding of the self. There’s something intimate about looking up at the moon, in knowing that others look up at the same moon as you do. Wherever, whenever you look at the moon, the moon itself doesn’t change. It’s only your perspective of it that changes and the song captures this feeling, this interplay between transience and permanence.

I love how personal yet universal the lyrics are, both in The Moon and across the album more generally. My favourite lyrics from the album are: “Because we both knew we're just floating in space over molten rock / And we felt safe and discovered that our skin is soft / There's nothing left except certain death / And that was comforting that night out under the moon”. We’re all so infinitesimally small yet we all constitute the fabric of the universe. We are all so different yet experience the same fundamental sensations, giving us our humanity. Feeling small is explored across the album, for example in I Felt My Size and also I Felt Your Shape, making the listener aware of their magnitude. I particularly like I Felt My Size. The song starts with just the guitar strumming, along with Elverum’s vocals. Suddenly, all the instruments, the synths blast through with full force, accompanied by the crackle of feedback. This eventually fades; the track is stripped back to just piano chords accompanying the vocals. And then all the instruments come back in. This switching of texture is characteristic of the whole album; Elverum strips back layers and then hits us with full intensity. The lyrics in I Felt My Size are thought-provoking. Elverum sings: “I looked up and hurt my eyes on the painful, powerful sky / I looked down and felt motion under me / … / I felt my size”. The speaker views himself in relation to his surroundings, to gain an understanding of his place in the world. For me, the whole album is evocative of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, when a young Stephen Dedalus writes in his Geography book: “Stephen Dedalus / Class of Elements / Clongowes Wood College / Sallins / County Kildare / Ireland / Europe / The World / The Universe”, showing an awareness of himself in relation to his surroundings. The units become progressively larger in magnitude yet they are inextricably linked. You can only experience the larger units via the lens of the self, the smallest unit, therefore the comprehension of the self is the key to comprehension of anything larger. The song ends with Elverum singing “But I’m small, I’m not a planet at all / I’m small”, capturing the sentiment that you can never completely understand neither the self nor the universe, powerfully ending the song.

The instrumentals on The Glow Pt. 2 are captivating. The tracks that stand out to me the most are (Something) and (Something) -1. (Something) starts off with an ominous drone bass, glueing the track together and then a haunting synth ostinato is played over this. As the track comes to an end, it seamlessly flows into (Something) -1. This track starts with a faint crackle. And then we hear what I can only describe as motor noises. The eerie synths crescendo, punctuated by high pitched noises. All the noises bleed into each other, bleed into a screeching whirlwind. There is something harsh and industrial about the soundscape of these tracks, providing a stark contrast to the warm and fuzzy nature of tracks like I Felt Your Shape. I like Elverum’s range across the album, as these instrumental tracks create a feeling of disorientation, of searching, in a way that can only be achieved by a chaotic and overwhelming soundscape.

Moreover, The Glow Pt. 2 explores the inevitability of loss as part of the human experience. The opening track, I Want Wind to Blow, Elverum sings “There’s no hope for me, I’ve been set free / There’s no breeze, there’s no ship on my sea”. For me, that lyric has always evoked the line from Fight Club: “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything”. There’s a newfound freedom that comes with sudden change. Sometimes the only way you can grow is for you to dismantle everything you know and then reassemble the pieces in a completely different fashion. I also love the song You’ll Be in the Air, which highlights the physical distance between two individuals. Elverum sings: “you’d feel the yawning gulf grow wider”, both referring to the geographical nature of a plane journey, as well as emotional distance, again exploring the feeling of change and loss. Headless Horseman is also a moving track that explores what once was. Featuring just acoustic guitar and vocals, there’s an immense sadness to the track, which is by Elverum’s soft vocals. In addition, The Glow Pt. 2  examines what it means for blood to flow, for a heart to pump, and what it means to truly be alive. Elverum sings: “I finally felt like I was breathing free” in The Moon; he sings: “My blood flows harshly / My heart beats loudly” in The Glow Pt. 2 and furthermore, “around they know my red blood is warm still” in My Warm Blood. To be alive is to experience every emotion, every sensation with such profound intensity. Loss is part of this experience and to be alive is to experience the good and the bad, wholeheartedly.