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The Microphones It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water Released in 2000 10.0/10 Styles Lo-Fi Psychedelic Pop Noise Rock Song Highlights The Pull The Glow Between Your Ear and the Other Ear |
The first sound you hear on "The Pull", the opening track to The Microphones water-themed It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water, is the overlapping, rhythmic strum of two separate acoustic guitars, panning alternately back and forth from left speaker to right. It continues, with only the tiniest level of subtle adjustment along the way, for around a minute straight, resulting in a hypnotic wash of sound. Two things become apparent at this point - one, the music feels like it's swimming, and two, it'd sound great through headphones. Press stop, grab some headphones, start over. They make the experience that much better. Besides, It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water is the sort of album you really want to hear with as few distractions as possible. The great use of panning on "The Pull" is only the beginning. Phil Elvrum, the group's only real, full-time member, is a master of analogue recording. There isn't a single computerised effect or adjustment on the entire album, yet Elvrum manages to achieve countless production tricks which are so inspired, that they leave the computer wizardry of other producers far behind. Elvrum certainly isn't the first musician to think that putting a recording mic on the other side of the room underneath a bucket is a good idea, but think about that concept for a moment - do you think there's many artists that managed to gain something from such an experiment that actually sounded any good? Elvrum makes seemingly useless production tricks, ones that sound like pure artistic indulgence, become utterly essential to his music. For most artists, singing into an muffled mic would result in nothing more than muffled vocals, yet Elvrum's gradual smothering of the mic during "The Glow" results in the band sounding like they're slowly sinking underwater while playing. The album is loaded with highlight tracks, which are themselves loaded with highlight moments. "The Pull" shifts from its wave-like guitar swirls into Elvrum's beautiful, childlike vocals, as he barely whispers "My body stopped moving and quickly got caught / I made my escape through exhaling lungs / And watched my body rot / Away." The song drifts dreamily back into the water, giving a few more moments to let Elvrum's voice sink in, before drifting back to him for the next lyric. This lazy-feeling progression continues until the music fades out entirely, before a sudden and thunderous burst of multiple guitars drives the song to its conclusion. It's quite breathtaking to hear. Following "The Pull", things move along to the excellent noise-rocker "Ice," followed by a gorgeous minimalist cover of Eric's Trip's "Sand." Another big highlight of the album, "Sand" opens with an accordion's buzz, which holds throughout the song, only changing from one note to the next, but never reaching any sort of rhythm or melody. Laid out over this consistent hum is a sparse assortment of clicks and found sounds, with Elvrum's voice providing its usual angelic bliss. This is followed by "The Glow", the album's centrepiece and unequivocally its greatest highlight. The track is a genuine achievement in lo-fi psych-pop, and manages to take in a multitude of musical influences, yet results in something which is both startlingly unique and completely moving. The track shifts from Elvrum's voice (I keep mentioning it because it's such a singular pleasure), to some beautifully timed Beach-Boys-styled vocal harmonising, and back to the vocals again, with Elvrum singing "I could feel far off the glow / And made my way through September and the next month towards the glow / I moved slow down from the hills / I'm getting cold / Oh, buried in snow", while the instrumentation slows considerably, giving a perfectly suited audio accompaniament. This gives way into the album's first alternate vocal, with Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn providing the voice of the ubiquitous "glow." Her voice is just as disarmingly beautiful as Elvrum's, and as she sings "Hey wake up it's me, that glow" it's all too wonderfully easy to get the shivers. From here, things only get more joyously surreal, as the music grinds to a halt, and with the words "I started to glow", Elvrum leads the entire band into a thumping, multi-instrument crescendo that's as bizzare as it is uplifting. As the song winds to its 11-minute-mark close (with that band-playing-underwater effect along the way), it's easy to look back at it the same way you'd look back at an entire great album - picking out favourite moments and so forth - as everything about "The Glow" feels genuinely epic. For my money it's the best song so far this decade. The remainder of the album is fantastic as well, with numerous highlights to take in, such as the fascinating layout of "(something)", in which Elvrum sings over a backing of ambient, ghostly wind, followed by Mirah singing the following verse, using the same melody, amidst a backing of thunderous percussion and feedback. "Karl Blau", named after a friend of the group, is a beautifully sentimental slow-dancer, which somehow manages to fit in perfectly amongst the more experimental tracks that make up most of the album. The second last track, "Between Your Ear and the Other Ear", is a delight, sounding like a campfire jam-session of about half a dozen people all playing the same playful, percussive guitar riff on slightly out of tune acoustic guitars, with Mirah providing vocals once again. The album's lone disappointment is "Drums", a track made up of, unsuprisingly, masses of chaotic, noisy drumming. The track certainly isn't awful, and reveals a degree of impressive complexity when heard on headphones, but it feels a little mediocre in comparrison to the rest of the album. It's only a minor blemish though, and It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water is no less brilliant for it. With all of its genius production touches, multi-part tracks and challengingly complex song structures, It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water is a reviewer's dream-album. The sort of release that's wonderful to deconstruct and examine for it's more musically academic features. The good news for everyone else is that it's also a thoroughly creative, original and moving piece of work from one of this decade's most talented musicians. Consider it essential listening. |