Upon writing this review, I found out that Phil Evrum has decided to disband The Microphones. This, of course, changes the whole original viewpoint I had for this review. For one, the very cryptic album became clear to me, and for two, it meant that it was the final statement from a great band with an all-too-short career. 2001's The Glow pt. 2 was one of the most haunting and intimate records to have come out in the last 11 years. It took on issues of human emotion and loss. Mt. Eerie, on the other hand, is all prophecy and Gilgamesh epic. It is far more avant-garde and cryptic and not for everyone. Basically, it is a play in five acts with the story centering around Mt. Eerie and the narrator (Evrum?). "Act 1: The Sun" starts off with silence and ascends into a tribal drum beat with chanting, and then slows down to spacey synths, guitar strumming, and Evrum's downbeat depression of a voice telling us how a ball of fire chases him up the mountain. "Act 2: Solar System" tells of a memory for a girl before entering "Act 3: Universe" which informs us that the ball of fire has set and is, in fact, the Sun. The Universe surrounds the mountain as doubt creeps in as does the Universe's thundering voice (played by K Records own Calvin Johnson) which asks "What do you want?!". In "Act 4: Mt. Eerie", the Sun catches up with and kills our humble narrator who, in "Act 5: Universe", becomes one with the stars. Q: Whats it all mean? A: Exactly what it says in all its lo-fi angelic chorus glory. But it is also a grand final statement from the band. Evrum, oddly enough, has decided to call his next band Mt. Eerie. With Evrum basically being the band, and The Microphones simply a name, you can be sure that Mt. Eerie will be as great as this album. Hopefully, this is a sign of things to come because he can only go two ways: better or worse.

Rainer Maria: Long Knives Drawn
Available at Amazon.com!

"Emo" was the tag that followed Rainer Maria around for the past four years as they toured and released their fuzzy indie-rock sophomore album A Better Version Of Me. Emo though really couldn't be applied to their fuzzy brand of pop-rock or to their lyrics to songs like "Contents Of Lincoln's Pockets". It seemed that the band shunned that label, but now with the release of Long Knives Drawn they seemed to have fully embraced their emo-hood. They are also clearly setting their eyes on mainstream acceptance as evident by the band photo on the CD booklet where singer Caithlin De Marrais has traded her blue jeans and T-shirts for a dress, and her pulled-back, plain hair for a 1940-ish doo.

The album's opener "Mystery and Misery" also confirm this as it ushers in the new sound of Rainer Maria. They have dropped their shoegaze guitar drones for fuzzy hooks, and De Marrais' vocals have gone from angelic, to harsh and desperate. Once you have compiled this though, their change is something of a fresh start. Because really where could they go with sound of previous efforts that they hadn't done already? "Long Knives" has a great distortion of a guitar hook and " Ears Ring" is probably the best song on the album. It's driving yet poppy and the lyrics are as cryptic as they are universal, "strange how the ears ring/ after a night of wrong doing". The lyrics on the rest of the album are basically a loosely based theme on the disintergration of relationships. The sound is the real treat of the album though. It has great hooks and chorus' that havent been heard since the days of The Pretenders. The only song that feels like a cheap pop single made for radio is "The Awful Truth Of Loving" with its jangly pop that wouldn't sound out of place on a Sixpence None The Richer album. Yet, the inclusion of a theremin excludes such comparisions, and "CT Catholic" is cool enough to forgive the one mistep as it is the kind of alt-pop tune weve been missing since The Breeders "Cannonball". The lines "it was the hottest day on record/ when we got into the big park/ I was thinking of an ending/ and we were barely even friends" assure it a place in the Kim Deal book of cool.

Long Knives Drawn has enough emotion-wrecking vocals to make it emo, yet it's really far more than part of a silly genre, it's a great rock album. Not the kind that rocks so hard it makes your ears bleed, or the kind that treads on past past musical trends to rock out, but instead it does what old-fashioned rock used to do in that it has great compositions and tight playing that, though not hard, are catchy in their own right. It is a stab at the mainstream without selling out, a chance of stardom without compromise, and lyrically, a emotional rollercoaster through relationships and their bitter ends.