The Glow Pt. 2 (Reissue)

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.