Microphones in 2020 is the fifth and final studio album by American indie folk and indie rock band the Microphones. It is the Microphones' first release in 17 years, following 2003's Mount Eerie. It was released on August 7, 2020, on frontman Phil Elverum's record label P.W. Elverum & Sun.
From the label (Phil):
"A Microphones album consisting of one long song.
A big flopping of pictures is here.
Here is a poem about it:
The old smell of air
coming faintly through the spring
crack in the snow above a hibernating bear’s winter den,
the smell of long self-absorption,
burrowing into one’s own chest, re-breathing the exhales of one’s own breath,
the smell of squinting in the dark
ruminating in dreams
beneath layering years, the snow still falling.
In the dark smoldering
slowly burning through all the old clothes, sifting through the ash,
wiping old shedded fur from the eyes
nosing out into the light.
In that brief moment when the airs of the past and present meet,
at the mouth of the open bed,
egoic solidity burns away in the spring wind, self becomes fuel,
there is only now
and the past is a dream burning off.
Fragments arranged along the trail, crumbs consumed, dust blown,
no route back."
