Anyone familiar with Mount Eerie is likely to know that songwriter Phil Elverum’s wife, Geneviève Gosselin, died of cancer last July and that the album “A Crow Looked at Me” documents the ongoing aftermath of that loss.
It’s enough to break your heart before you even drop the needle, and that’s kind of the point. After that type of sudden, life-shattering blow, what good could listening to records, jotting down thoughts, or figuring out chords really do? “Ravens”, for instance, finds Elverum a month on after his wife’s death, very certain of the fact that she’s gone and yet still picking her berries and reminding himself of things to tell her when she gets back. In these deeply intimate moments, we doubt that anything will lift his grief and restore the normalcy we all depend upon, and yet the record ultimately acts as a journey that reveals how art can help the soul and heart begin to mend. Through painstaking reflection and unfathomable honesty, Elverum has crafted indie’s answer to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. It’s not beautiful because he shares his pain; it’s beautiful because he shares the hope he finds through his pain.
Essential Tracks: “Ravens”, “Seaweed”, and “Swims”
The Fat Angel Sings 