Pitchfork

This April, K Records will reissue the Microphones' 2001 album, The Glow Pt. 2, accompanied by a disc of outtakes and demos. To weigh The Glow Pt. 2 here-- it was this website's record of the year in 2001; it's one of the more idiosyncratic, cultish indie-pop releases of the past decade-- might be hasty. But, in short: self-effacement is one of indie-pop's enduring tropes, and The Glow Pt. 2 is a great indie-pop album because of how complicated its self-effacement is. When John Donne said "no man is an island unto himself," he did not mean they were also rivers, mountains, and valleys. It's a misunderstanding on the part of Phil Elvrum-- whose big, noisy productions purposely enveloped his small, lost voice-- that makes some of the rougher recordings on the reissue's second disc a revealing listen.

On the album version of "The Moon", for example, Elvrum's voice was so clouded by the track that it virtually disappeared; here, accompanied only by saxophones and an organ, his sentiment has nowhere to hide. The lyrics portray a couple trying to cut swaths through the alienation that hangs over the early stages of deep relationships. Unsurprisingly, it sucks, deeply. Elvrum finds himself feeling estranged at her parents house; later, he returns to the town alone to wipe the bad memories away-- but never shares his experience. Ironically, the lyrical climax of the song was completely obscured before: Elvrum and the girl find themselves lying on a roof at night, feeling connected only in their silence; when he looks for an ally, it's not at the person next to him, but into the vastness of the sky above-- "And like the moon, my chest was full."