The Guy Who Makes 'Fancy People Adventures' Makes Music Too

-"Voice in Headphones" off Lost Wisdom
-"With My Hands Out" off Lost Wisdom

Phil Elverum aka Mt. Eerie and formerly The Microphones, has a new album out today called Lost Wisdom. It was recorded with Julie Doiron, who was once in Eric's Trip (The Mics covered Eric's Trip's "Sand"), and is a couple new songs and some non-album Mt. Eerie classics done with Doiron and Elverum singing and Fred Squire playing guitar.

This is the second of three Mt. Eerie releases this year. Next month, a collection of songs all written while Elverum was in Norway have been re-recorded and collected as Dawn and a version from Buenaventura Press comes with a book compiling Elverum's Norway journals. Last Spring, Elverum dropped Black Wooden Ceiling, an album that's somehow as beautiful and affecting as most Mt. Eerie releases and a heavy and evil-sounding as more proper Black Metal albums (along with Nachtmystium's Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. 1, it's the most out-there and experimental Black Metal album of the year).

-"Lost Wisdom" by Burzum off Det Som Engang Var

From the cover of Lost Wisdom, a kinda sumi-inked image of a burning shack and the title--presumably derived from a Burzum track of the same name--you might expect more heaviness but it's pretty much the complete opposite. At first, it sounded like something of a disappointment, the kind of girl-boy sing-along sissy rock I hate, but there's way more going on to it than that...

Elverum is also the creator of the hilarious "Fancy People Adventures" comic strip, which was sold as a 365-day calendar a couple years ago and now shows up in Arthur Magazine. A livejournal user was kind enough to post each image of the Fancy People Adventures 2005 right here as well.

While the main goal of "Fancy People Adventures" seems to be unadulterated retardation in the form of gag-strips, there's a general theme of exploitation and corruption of "D.I.Y" (or whatever you want to call them) values, from both the corporate stand-point--my favorite strip shows a guy in a suit in an office ordering Lollapalooza tickets, yes, that's the joke--and from the stand-point of clueless and self-aggrandizing followers: Frat-boy hippies, attention-seeking punks, self-congratulatory Green Party membersm etc. A bunch of strips are at the website for Fancy People Adventures, and below I've chosen a bunch of favorites. If you like Jeffrey Brown or Johnny Ryan or are smart enough to hear the anger and disdain in Mt. Eerie's lyrics and not just think it's cute songs to put on a mix CD for some girl you're trying to smash, you should love these: