Phil Elvrum Quotes

#1. A lot of my songs are about death and the fleetingness of life. It just feels good to remind myself about that a lot. For whatever reason. And it's a beautiful thing, actually. It seems to me like it's a beautiful way to live in the world and to relate to things, with an awareness of temporality.

Phil Elvrum

#2. Twitter is so stupid. I mean, it sucks! It's not a good way to communicate and it's really difficult to use it for any functional thing.

Phil Elvrum

#3. I didn't want to do a double album. I just felt like the last two records I made were like that, and a lot of records I was buying were like that, and it started to feel like it was too much music to digest at once.

Phil Elvrum

#4. I learned how to sit on the couch in front of the fire and read a magazine, just for like eight hours a day, every day. It was ... crazy.

Phil Elvrum

#5. I've been thinking a lot about Anacortes and what it's like to be here, though I'm not trying to get people to move here - I would hate that.

Phil Elvrum

#6. All things in the world are singing a song, reciting a poem, inaudibly, to their surroundings, to the things they encounter.

Phil Elvrum

#7. For some reason focusing on destruction and mortality is more poetically exciting to me than hope and love.

Phil Elvrum

#8. People's attentions spans are getting shorter and shorter. I don't want to cater to that necessarily but, just for myself, it feels like more than 40 minutes of music is too much.

Phil Elvrum

#9. It's interesting to think about the different forms one place can take.

Phil Elvrum

#10. I like the idea of politically charged music a lot, but it usually seems to be preaching to the choir and ineffective.

Phil Elvrum

#11. It's nice to have a band that can adapt to whatever show we're in, so we can play on a big stage or a house show.

Phil Elvrum

#12. If my music is political in a way, and it might be, it's in the way of generating a sensitivity in people, a deeper awareness of the world around them. That's my goal, at least.

Phil Elvrum

#13. I was going to tweet every three seconds about every thought that went through my mind, and I did that for a few days. It was really fun, and funny to me.

Phil Elvrum

#14. When I sing the songs, there's a color tone and a place, and it's not a place that I remember in reality. It's usually based on a photo that I took - 'cause those photos don't look like the real world. The film distorts them, and the colors get exaggerated.

Phil Elvrum

#15. When I read War and Peace in Norway, really far away from humanity for a long time, it was such an amazing, affirming blast of "humanity" in all forms. It totally cracked my mind-nut open and rainbows shot out. I loved humanity and being alive, rather than wanting to bury my head in the snow.

Phil Elvrum

#16. I've always written songs with a visual counterpart in my mind that no one else can see.

Phil Elvrum

#17. To me, Twitter seems like a way for people to just let the world know about the most mundane bullshit that crosses their mind.

Phil Elvrum

#18. I really like looking at other people's book collections when I'm at someone's house. I think it is an amazing cross section of a person's brain and lifestyle. I think everyone should photograph their book spines and make a website. Seriously.

Phil Elvrum

#19. Whenever I get a tweet that's trying to promote a thing someone cares about, I'm like, "how annoying!"

Phil Elvrum

#20. I think that I probably inevitably fetishize nature, although I try not to, because it's kind of embarrassing, repulsive behavior. I think it's just an extension of me being old-fashioned.

Phil Elvrum

#21. I am still not taking my "career" in music for granted. It is constantly surprising that it works. Generally my thinking about the future has this assumption of an impending apocalypse.

Phil Elvrum