CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Phil Elverum

American musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ7181870
Source-derived summary

Philip Whitman Elverum (né Elvrum; born May 26, 1978) is an American musician and songwriter known for his indie bands the Microphones and Mount Eerie.

Early and personal life

Phil Elverum was born on May 26, 1978, in Anacortes, Washington. Growing up, Elverum's father regularly made mixtapes for him and his sister. He soon started to play the tuba but after three years moved onto drums. At age 14, he started his own band "Nubert Circus", playing the drums and writing lyrics. Elverum attended Anacortes High School. After graduating, he traveled across Canada with his then-girlfriend. In the summer of 1997, during his "punk rock experience", he moved to Olympia, Washington, where he lived until 2002. Elverum briefly attended Evergreen State College. He expressed little interest in college, favoring the music scene, although he remained a relative unknown.

Editorial summary

“Phil Elverum” enters the record as american musician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Phil, Elverum and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1978, 1997, 2002—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1978-05-23. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Phil, Elverum and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Phil Elverum” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Phil, Elverum and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7181870. VIAF identifies the subject as 53981786. The Library of Congress control number is no2009002151. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1997 and 2002.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Phil Elverum”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Phil Elverum primary sources, Phil Elverum archive and Phil research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Phil Elverum”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Phil Elverum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.