Quotes from Phil Elverum

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.

My first band was called Nubert Circus, a very embarrassing, dumb name. It means nothing. We were kind of grunge. I would say we were more funny punk, a lot of songs about food and stuff like that.

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

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.

The Beach Boys were my favorite. I use to listen to their hits over and over, especially 'In My Room' and 'Don't Worry Baby.' There's something really sad about 'Don't Worry Baby.' Even though it's just a California song about racing cars, the melody is really sad. There's melancholy in it.

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

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 the experience being in the audience and being overwhelmed by sound, like thick, oppressive loud sound and distortion.

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

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.

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

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

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

These people that worked with my dad doing landscaping were in a grunge band so the music on the cover of Rolling Stone was in a very real way connected to people practicing in the woods near my house while I was home doing my homework.

When I first started recording music, I was actually singing about microphones, equipment, recording.

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

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 used to have a musical group with a girlfriend called The Thunderclouds. It was like a Beach Boys cover band. And we would just figure out Beach Boy songs - break 'em into two-part harmonies. And, you know, we played a couple of shows around Olympia. It was very fun.

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

My shows have never been related to my albums at all because my albums have all kinds of crazy instruments and stuff that could never be performed live. I'm used to people expecting this 12-piece band to show up with three drum sets and an accordion.

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.

I need some time to write songs and work on my thing, but I'm just living my life and doing family stuff and letting inspiration come when it comes. But I also don't feel a desperate need to keep pushing myself into people's faces to stay cool and relevant.

I don't really see myself in a lineage which is fine with me. Sometimes I do try to explicitly copy an exact song, an arrangement, a sound - and I fail. And so you can't even tell I was trying to do that thing. It makes sense in my own head but I'm incapable of copying.

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