June 24, 2009

The 'Gum Drop XCIV: Hear New Mount Eerie, Win MOSCOT Sunglasses

thubmnail icon: The 'Gum Drop XCIV: Hear New Mount Eerie, Win MOSCOT Sunglasses

Last year Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie, the Microphones) put out Lost Wisdom, a collaboration with Eric's Trip's Julie Doiron and Fred Squire, but the dark, multi-textured, black metal and folk-inflected Wind's Poem (out 8/18 on P.W. Elverum & Sun) feels like the true heir to The Glow Pt. 2 and No Flashlight. As Elverum put it, the collection investigates the "theme of wind and also destruction and impermanence." We asked him about closing track "Stone's Ode." He told us about its position on the collection and its meaning, but there wasn't room for his full response in this morning's Drop, so you can read it all here, after you take a listen.

STEREOGUM: For people who haven't heard Wind's Poem, can you explain the song and the characters of "Wind" and "Stone"?

PHIL ELVERUM: Basically the idea with Wind's Poem is that this crazy beautiful force of erosion and destruction (wind) constantly wraps around the world and permeates our lives, and is occasionally audible, blowing through buildings and branches. It is an invisible river, and it sings/says poems in a mystery language. So, the counterpart to wind must be "stone" (meaning all solid tangible things) and why shouldn't "stone" sing a hidden song too? So, "Stone's Ode" is about this. It's about the interplay between these two things: shape vs. destroyer of shape. It could also be heard as "person vs. mysterious mortality," or "a sense of stability vs. inevitable impending chaos." It might seem meaningless and overly theoretical to most people, but honestly it is very touching for me to think about these things, and to see a the way a river has carved out a hillside and relate it to my own aging body and surprising failures and joys.

STEREOGUM: How did you decide to put "Stone's Ode" at the end of the album? It feels like a movement into some sort of a resolution.

PE: Mostly because I felt like the optimistic plucky sounding fade-out to the song needed to close the album. There was no other place for it. The song has two halves with a weird discordant chord right in the middle (F#m), and then it says "night falls..." and a new world is entered. It should really be a second song, but I like how it really does feel like night falls and a song continues now, feeling different in the dark. That transition at the end of the day. I like ending albums with the suggestion of a whole new direction, a premonition about the next album I guess.

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In this week's Drop, we also offered the chance to win a pair of MOSCOT sunglasses. The MOSCOT "Nebb" shades come courtesy of Amazing Baby. The Brooklyn quintet, currently on tour with Phoenix, just released their debut full-length Rewild on Shangri-La Music. Look for them at Lollapalooza, too. For now, look at the sunglasses:

One winner gets to wear them home, but you need to enter first. There's also time to walk away with a copy of the Deluxe Edition of Pixies Minotaur box.