Phil Elverum

“Nirvana really touched me as a teenager and started making me pay attention to music as a participatory thing that I could do.”

“After I made 'A Crow Looked at Me,' I remember people saying things to me like, 'You've made a beautiful tribute to Genevieve.' And I felt like, no! No no no, I haven't. I made a tribute to my own destruction and desolation. This is not a portrait of her. That's not who she was. She wasn't just a person who died.”

“Even when I was calling myself the Microphones I only really ever played new songs... because I feel, like, a pretty strong connection to the song when I'm performing it.”

“It's challenging to live in Anacortes. I lived in Olympia for five years, went on tour for a year, ended up in Norway for a winter, and ended up back in Anacortes. But I have a long life ahead of me. I'll probably live in many different places, and then die in Anacortes.”

“I like a bass drum. A big one.”

“I want to create a life that is just healthy and peaceful - an enclave, really, of retreat. It's not helpful for the big picture. It's totally selfish to run away like that.”

“People used to assume I was a serious/sad person because of my music for some reason.”

“I wanted to make a record that would transcend the bad, hard feelings of a love relationship not working out, to make something that metabolized it into something useful and good.”

“There are parts on 'Wind's Poem' that are literal recordings of wind. I had this old sound effects record that I got some wind from and then I figured out that distorted cymbals sound just like wind so I used that a lot.”

“Grief - the actual, natural process of it - doesn't have a schedule that I can work my life around.”

“I buy some black metal records kind of blindly, and I end up really liking maybe 30% of them. There's a lot of duds, for me at least, in black metal. I have kind of picky tastes about it.”

“If I wanted to make big, bombastic, distorted, echo-y, trippy music, the atmospheric stuff, a studio is nice. But it's nice to know that it's not necessary.”

“We had a simple 8-track studio set up in the record store where I worked. And just staying after work and experimenting, realizing what was possible with recording - that's why my project was called The Microphones at first. Because it wasn't even songs really. It was just sound.”

“After many days of grocery store food, sitting down for a deliberate, slow, expensive eating time can be the best.”

“My grandpa is the funniest person in the world, straight up. But mostly everyone in my family groans when he is 'on.' I am his biggest fan.”

“I'm actually not fussy. I enjoy getting into it and talking about anything, really. It feels good.”

“Twitter is so stupid. I mean, it sucks!”

“The universe is chaotic and meaningless, and it's good to laugh about it. That's my stance on life, actually. Some people go through life grinding their teeth, suffering and banging their head against the wall. I'm glad that's not the reaction that occurs in me.”

“On CBC Radio, the Canadian national radio, there's a show called 'WireTap.' The host is Jonathan Goldstein. It's amazing.”

“I was really into Michelangelo in seventh and eighth grade.”