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The Glow Part 2

by

The Microphones

 
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The Glow Part 2
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Avg: 4.0 (280 ratings)

Indie rock's other lo-fi masterpiece.

  • We Say...

    Review by Yancey Strickler

    If The Glow Pt. 2 were six or seven tracks shorter, it might rank with Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as one of the best indie-rock albums ever made. As it is, Phil Elvrum's masterpiece gets a bit lost across its twenty tracks — but only just a bit. Despite its lack of focus (the one criticism you can pin on Elvrum), The Glow Pt. 2 is magnificent, a heartbreaking album that sprawls and burrows, wet with tears and rain.

    If you are new to Phil Elvrum, a quick word on his aesthetic: lots of acoustic guitar layers that often sound like they are chasing their own shadows; he self-harmonizes a lot, but very loosely: syllables echo, words start and then start again as he finds his way to them; and his lyrics almost solely deal with longing and desire, pronounced gorgeously, and in a bucolic framework. Nature itself is often a character in his songs: Thoreau and Elvrum would have a lot to talk about.

    So, the best songs, then: "I'll Not Contain You" (light and airy), "Map" (beautiful and foreboding), "I Want Wind to Blow" (precious), "I Felt My Size" (stunning and obtuse) and "I Felt Your Shape" (even more stunning and even more obtuse). And then there's "You'll Be in the Air," one of Elvrum's best songs, and one of the best songs written for long-distance love ever (the Kinks' "Strangers" and "This Time Tomorrow" being the best), except maybe it's about a plane crash. The song closes, "You'll be in the air/ You'll bear fruit, your bare feet/ Your bare arms in the heat/ You'll be able to feel your might." It's a perfect canvas for hope and pining. And along with "I Felt Your Shape" and much of The Glow Pt. 2, a perfect song for falling in love.

  • They Say...

    Review by Heather Phares, All Music Guide

    While It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water expanded the Microphones' lo-fi, psych pop horizons, their 66-minute epic The Glow, Pt. 2 marks an even bigger departure. Named after It Was Hot's sprawling centerpiece, the album explores and explodes styles and moods over the course of 20 songs that lead into one another breathlessly, as if even an hour simply isn't enough time for Phil Elvrum and company to pack in all of their ideas. The album revels in its kaleidoscopic sounds, spanning pastoral folky ballads, playful symphonic pop, and gusts of white noise. Flourishes like the steel drums on the title track and the double-tracked vocals and xylophones on "The Map" make The Glow, Pt. 2 something of a rarity: a lo-fi album designed for headphones. The distorted drums, murky organs, and crisp acoustic guitars that punctuate the album have an oversaturated, almost tangible quality that, while dense, never overwhelms Elvrum's fragile voice or poetic lyrics. The beautiful acoustic ballad "I Felt Your Shape" cautions against holding on too tight to someone, literally or figuratively; "I Am Bored" sets the boredom of a dying relationship to noisy fuzz pop. But it's The Glow, Pt. 2's deep, nearly spiritual yearning that makes it the Microphones' most compelling album to date. Vague, strangely hymnal lyrics like "Through rotting skin I'll leave my coffin/Through callous work I will grow soft," from "I'll Not Contain You," resonate emotionally, albeit cryptically. At times, The Glow, Pt. 2 resembles My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything ("I Want to Be Cold") and His Name Is Alive's Home Is in Your Head (especially on the instrumentals); like those bands' best work, the album is dense with musical quick-changes, production tricks, and evocative imagery. Expansive yet accessible, indulgent yet unpretentious, The Glow, Pt. 2 redefines the Microphones' fascinatingly contradictory music.

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