Quotes from Phil Elverum

I think I'm obsessed with accessibility which is why, when I'm touring, I want to play all ages shows.

I start with the aim of making something instrumental, and then I'm just like, 'Agh, no, it's not interesting enough. I've got to say something here.'

It's really hard just making dinner as a single parent, but I'm figuring it out. I just have to be more focused and efficient with my little scraps of time that I do have.

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.'

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.

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

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.

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

I am not satisfied with the ending of 'Mount Eerie' the album, so maybe by calling myself that, I am attempting to elaborate on the ending.

Comedy is deep and wild and I am excited about the mysteries within.

All the books on my shelves, when I would go to them to look for help with my anguish, they all just seemed so crass. They didn't get it. Those books don't understand. Nobody understands.

In the early '50s, my great-grandmother and grandfather raised a baby gorilla named Bobo who wore clothes and played with the neighborhood kids.

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.

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 got into Nirvana, and it was my sort of awakening into the idea that music could be like rough and crazy and local. And so I started to realize that there were bands playing in my town, Anacortes.

Nirvana was happening when I was 14, kind of the perfect age. Growing up in Anacortes, Washington, it was close enough to Seattle that it seemed like a local thing.

Recording and touring are totally separate universes for me and it's strange and refreshing when they invade each other momentarily.

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.

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 am drawn to cold, desolate places rather than Hawaii. I actually love Hawaii too, but I tend to go to Iceland or Norway or Northern Japan - northern places for whatever reason. Which aren't necessarily the best places to tour.

They're all true - the cliches like 'one day at time' and 'ups and downs.'

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.

Usually I work at the merch table until one minute before I have to go on stage.

A weird side effect of being in close proximity to death is an urgency.