Phil Elverum

“I am commodifying my grief, to put it really bluntly. I accept it. And I try not to think about it.”

“I like Copenhagen, just because my shows there have been really good for some reason. Not that I love the city itself, but every time I play there it feels amazing. Pretty nice people there.”

“I remember discovering that I loved recording - that breakthrough when I was in high school getting to record for the first time.”

“Somebody from Pitchfork Festival wanted me to have a Microphones reunion. It's a joke. It's just me.”

“I grew up without religion, but my parents have always been somewhat mystical about nature: The mountain is looking at us, stuff like that.”

“It's interesting to think about the different forms one place can take.”

“Eric's Trip is still a huge influence on me. The style of those recordings and the rawness of them is very inspiring. And the density of the distorted parts, amazing.”

“It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.”

“I can't bring myself to release an instrumental album because I feel like I want some meat on the bone. Something to chew on, lyrically and content-wise.”

“My daughter is like a tether back to the functional world, and I'm aware of how helpful that is.”

“I do spend time trying to find good melodies, and I try to remember them when I do discover them. But also it's mostly intuitive; I noodle around with the line until it sounds and feels right.”

“I have a hard time working with other people with my own songs because I have a pretty complete idea of how it should be. It's usually just me multi-tracking which is better than coercing someone into doing my idea.”

“I don't get to make many choices in my life as a single parent.”

“I am so thirsty to do my projects whenever I have a spare moment.”

“I'm open to making any kind of music, or maybe making no music ever again. That's also an option, always. Who knows what'll happen.”

“There's a lot of music out there that's like, 'I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black,' and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.”

“Life here (in the Pacific Northwest, not in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland or the chain of buildings connecting them but in the rest of the place, out west and east from the north-south I-5 river) can sometimes feel like a half-dream, half-myth.”

“I always like to play in beautiful cathedrals, when I can somehow get access to do a punk show there.”

“I'm singing these songs about death and stuff. I see somebody who's, like, in their sixties or seventies at the show, and I'm like, 'Yeah, sure. Fair enough.'”

“There are a lot of names on the credits of 'The Glow Pt. 2,' but most of those people are just on one half of one song or something.”