Phil Elverum Quotes

Phil Elverum

Profession : Musician

Birth : May 23, 1978

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

Phil Elverum

I'm not a perfectionist. I don't have enough patience to go over the same details over and over trying to get it perfect.

Phil Elverum

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

Phil Elverum

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

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

I like a bass drum. A big one.

Phil Elverum

One thing I've heard that makes sense to me about grief is that there's this conception that it's a thing that you process, and then you're done processing it. But really it's not a thing that has an end, it's just what life is like now. You are living with this now, probably forever.

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

I'm pretty open.

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

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.'

Phil Elverum

I think that as a kid I was pretty drawn to melodrama.

Phil Elverum

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

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum

I'm artistically satisfied and happy.

Phil Elverum

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.

Phil Elverum