You’re nuts if you pass up a chance to see Microphones perform live. After all, they’re typically billed as Mount Eerie these days. Essentially, they’re the same band and the music they make is, for lack of a better term, eerily similar. For the final performance Department of Safety would ever have, Microphones were the obvious choice of performer to conclude it all.

P:ano’s Nick Krgovich (No Kids) has been a busy man of late, what with his recent project Gigi with producer Colin Stewart (Black Mountain, Destroyer). Yet he managed to swing by Department of Safety for a brief performance as his older, much earlier moniker P:ano. Solo, Krgovich stood with a white Casio keyboard and mumbled melodically into microphone. It was minimal, quiet, yet beautiful all at once.

Toward the end of his set, Karl Blau announced that there was a questionable stench stemming from his attire, which had been stashed in his shed for an unknown quantity of years. A local Anacortes favorite, Blau’s bizarre folk absolutely warrants the preceding freak – a term that common folk might attach to a musician performing while dressed as a fireman. Though, with LAKE as his backup, it sounded (and looked) almost too natural.

This is it, the last call. The last show. And yet it’s a first for me; my first time visiting the Department Of Safety in Anacortes. The evening began with a brief drive along dark highways to the town known most, perhaps, for its ferry system connecting mainland Washington with the San Juan Islands. Eight years before, in 2002, the Department Of Safety opened with a show featuring performances from Karl Blau, P:Ano, and, among others, Microphones. This night would be quite similar, though also …

Upon learning of the new Bakers At Dawn album and covering the band’s new video, another discovery was made. That of Cory Landels, the director of said video and mastermind behind this video for Mount Eerie’s “Between Two Mysteries”, one of my favorite tracks of 2009. Comparing the two, both have the same look and feel. But where “Mesmophone” was pleasant and, in a way, calm; “Between Two Mysteries” has an obvious eerie nature to it. Yet there’s something romantic about the video; as if it …