Posts Tagged ‘Mount Eerie’

The MICROPHONES – ” Microphones in 2020 “

Posted: December 10, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Once upon a time, Phil Elverum sang about swimming to the bottom of the ocean and finding beauty there. On “Microphones In 2020”, he plunged deep into his own personal history and discovered something arguably more profound. Eschewing nostalgia and solipsism as much as possible, the Mount Eerie mastermind revived his long-dormant Microphones moniker to scour that era of his life for wisdom. He came away with epiphanies about meaning, impermanence, and “the true state of all things,” wrapped up in a staggering 43-minute recording that defies categorization.

After more than a decade releasing music as Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum dusted off his moniker as the Microphones to release a single-song LP tracking a lifelong tension between his art and his enduring sense of smallness. The album or, as Elverum describes it, “This spooling-out, repetitive decades-long song string/This river coursing through my life,” is a droning dirge that expands the affecting tableaux of A Crow Looked at Me and Now Only into a nearly cradle-to-grave chronicle informed by years of travel and experiences of loss. The effect is hypnotic, as cascades of distortion nearly swallow Elverum’s voice, reminding us that he is not only an auteur of empathy, but also a humble messenger of mortality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7BkabF31ak&t=159s

The last recording released under the Microphones’ name was 2003’s Mount Eerie, a precursor to Phil Elverum’s creative shift. The notion that the Microphones disbanded is something of a misconception, because even though he collaborated with other musicians on the project throughout the years, the Microphones name is really synonymous with Elverum himself. Since assuming the Mount Eerie persona, he’s proven incredibly prolific, releasing 10 studio albums under his new name between 2005 and 2019. Elverum slipped back into the Microphones for a performance last summer, and when the stirrings around this choice picked up, he began toying with “what it even means to step back into an old mode.”

The result is Microphones in 2020, the sprawling, one-track album lasting nearly 45 minutes. Microphones in 2020 contains some of the year’s best, most reflective and probing lyrics. Elverum’s mastery of language is impressive thanks to his ability to capture an intangible, fleeting feeling without coming across as pretentious or out of reach. It’s honestly worth sitting down and reading the lyrics along with the song, consuming the words as poetry. His descriptions of nature are some of the most soul-stirring moments of the album, which isn’t surprising considering his lifelong sense of unity with the flora and fauna around him. “I started making my own embarrassing early tries at this / thing that sings at night above the house, branches in the wind bending / wordlessly, I wanted to capture it on tape,” he says of his early musical intentions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7BkabF31ak&t=96s

For a while, I thought that Phil Elverum had said everything he could say as Mount Eerie. The two records on which he mourned the death of his wife, Geneviève Castrée—A Crow Looked at Me and Now Only—felt like the end of a story, just as his marriage to actress Michelle Williams and concurrent move to New York City seemed to mark the beginning of a new one. But within a year, Elverum separated from Williams and returned to Anacortes, and though he didn’t retire Mount Eerie, he did something even more unexpected: He resurrected The Microphones, recording his first album (OK, an album-length song) under the moniker in 17 years. It’s one of Elverum’s most unguarded works, under any name.

To listen to Microphones in 2020 is to follow Elverum as he revisits his own mythology—making tapes as a teenager, stargazing and feeling his size after recording The Glow, Pt. 2, setting fire to the Microphones name and watching Mount Eerie rise from the ashes—and asks himself: What led me to become what I am? Does anything mean anything? His thoughts wander to the time he saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Aberdeen or ran into Will Oldham on tour in Italy, as if trying to rediscover the significance that these memories once held. But in the song’s final minutes, Elverum finds himself back at the same inconclusive conclusion he’s come to multiple times before, in his life and in the song itself: “There’s no end.” The song is over, but his search for meaning is not.

Microphones in 2020

MICROPHONES – ” Microphones in 2020 “

Posted: August 10, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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This is the double vinyl version of the new song/album by the Microphones. Excellent and fancy manufacturing of all components. Comes with a big poster. Foil stamping. The usual exquisite quality.

Phil Elverum releases the first new music under his long-hibernating moniker, the Microphones, in 17 years. The new album is titled “Microphones in 2020″ and is out today via his own label, P.W. Elverum & Sun. This new album follows The Microphone’s previous record, 2003’s Mount Eerie. Elverum has toured and released music under the name Mount Eerie since 2003, but he briefly revived the Microphones moniker for a show at What the Heck Fest in his hometown of Anacortes, Washington last year. The album consists entirely of a 44-minute-long track. “We all crash through life prodded and diverted by our memories,” Elverum says. “There is a way through to disentanglement. Burn your old notebooks and jump through the smoke. Use the ashes to make a new thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7BkabF31ak

The Microphones in 2020. Phil Elverum (who retired the moniker in 2003 and has gone by Mount Eerie ever since) brought back the name he used for such classic albums as The Glow Pt. 2 for the first time in 17 years, and the result is a one-song, 44-minute album where he muses on the very idea of being “The Microphones.” “There is too much focus on the title of a thing,” Phil told us in a new interview. “Ideally, we can just make stuff without a title for it and without an identity for it. Things can just rest on their own merit, but that’s too idealistic [laughs] and impossible.”

Released Aug. 7th, 2020
as a 2xLP by P.W. Elverum & Sun

MOUNT EERIE feat Julie Doiron – ” Lost Wisdom pt. 2 “

Posted: September 25, 2019 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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In October 2008, Mount Eerie and Canadian singer-songwriter Julie Doiron released a collaborative album called Lost Wisdom. They are now releasing its sequel: Lost Wisdom pt. 2 is out November 8th via Mount Eerie’s label P.W. Elverum & Sun.  listen to their new song “Love Without Possession.”

Mount Eerie and Julie Doiron are to play shows together this December. According to a press release, those concerts will “likely be the only performance of this album’s material for the foreseeable future.”

In a statement, Phil Elverum discussed the themes and intentions of the new record. He refers to the death of his wife, the artist Geneviève Castrée, which inspired his last two studio albums, 2017’s A Crow Looked at Me and 2018’s Now Only. He also alludes to his marriage to Michelle Williams and their separation earlier this year. “Finding myself staring into another fire, disoriented by the changes, these songs came out,” he wrote.

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Elverum continued, “I tried to make songs that did not rely at all on who I am or who I am singing about,” adding, “Knowing that anyone with internet access might have questions about my specifics, I don’t want to say anything personal that isn’t already in the songs. My fingers are crossed that when I push them out to sea they will be met with calm humane understanding. That’s what they’re about after all.”

MOUNT EERIE – ” Distortion / Tintin In Tibet “

Posted: February 21, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Mount Eerie, the project of Phil Elverum (who used to record as The Microphones), is releasing a new album, Now Only, on March 16th via P.W. Elverum & Sun. He previously shared its first single, the 11-minute long “Distortion” . Now there is another song from the album, “Tintin in Tibet,” which opens the album. It is sung to his late wife, about when they first met and when their romance was new.

Mount Eerie released an acclaimed album, “A Crow Looked At Me”, last March via Elverum’s own label, P.W. Elverum & Sun. The album was written after his wife, Geneviève Elverum (née Gosselin), passed away in July 2016 after losing her fight with pancreatic cancer. It was among our and many others Top Albums of 2017 . “Now Only” is due out only a year after A Crow Looked At Me.

Geneviève was a musician and comic book artist who had recorded as both Woelv and Ô Paon. Geneviève was diagnosed with inoperable, stage four pancreatic cancer just four months after giving birth to their daughter and died a year later, leaving Elverum to raise their infant daughter on his own. Based on “Distortion,” the album is still understandably about Geneviève. But “Distortion” also tells a tale of a 23-year-old Elverum having a pregnancy scare when he definitely wasn’t ready to have kids. He also sings about attending his great grandfather’s funeral, the first dead body he saw in person, among other things in the seemingly autobiographical track.

A previous press release described Now Only as such: “Now Only is a continuation and deepening of the themes presented on that album. Elverum further explores that style of direct, unadorned lyrical writing, with further ruminations on his wifes death and their life together, the effects of the sudden success of these intimate songs, and the concept of remembrance.”

This is the first song on “Now Only” by Mount Eerie
(ELV041 from P.W. Elverum & Sun, March 16th, 2018)

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MOUNT EERIE – ” A Crow Looked At Me ” Best Albums Of 2017

Posted: November 30, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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mount eerie a crow Top 50 Albums of 2017

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”

MOUNT EERIE – ” A Crow Looked at Me ” Best Albums Of 2017

Posted: July 10, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Mount Eerie A Crow Looked at Me cover

How do you turn a shocking personal tragedy into fuel for your next record, It has been said suffering is required for great art, but Phil Elverum seems to disagree. Last year, he lost his wife Geneviève Castrée, a noted artist and musician, to pancreatic cancer at the age of 35. “A Crow Looked at Me” is about Castrée’s death, yes, but more than that, it is about her absence.

Elverum makes this clear in the record’s opening moments: “Someone is there and then they’re not/And it’s not for singing about/It’s not for making into art.” He wants you to take him at his word here. A Crow Looked at Me is not a particularly imaginative, poetic or tuneful album, but pierces with its intimacy and honesty, as gripping and deep as any 10-piece overture. This is not a meticulous thoughtfully curated, poured-over album; this is Elverum sorting through the wreckage in real time.

A Crow Looked at Me is an unflinching examination of death in all of its crushing absurdity. It’s an exceedingly difficult listen, a piece with Benji and Skeleton Tree. Dates and events are recorded with precision, each track a dutifully, objectively detailed chapter of the months before and after Castrée’s death. Sadness emanates from every aspect of the production. “Death is real,” which functions as the album’s subtitle, makes its presence felt with every creaking note. The context is significant as well. Crow was also recorded in the room where Castrée died, with her instruments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGESP0iePmQ

Crow is explicit. It does not dodge, evade or tiptoe, but the delivery is paced and smoothed out. There’s no tragedy to unspool; the circumstances are laid to bear in stark terms again and again. “Your transformed dying face will recede with time/Is what our counselor said,” sings Elverum on “Swims”, which is to say it hasn’t yet. Not even close. A Crow Looked at Me is an open wound, so fresh that shock and numbness still stand in the place of the pain. There are moments of escape, like on “When I Take Out the Garbage at Night”, where Elverum loses himself in the night sky; but they are fleeting, and followed by the devastation of tracks like “Toothbrush/Trash”.

When he’s not staring emptily at his wife’s belongings, Elverum reckons with what to do with her memories and his new life as a widower and a father. “I am a container of stories about you,” he croaks on “My Chasm”. He’s unsure how many to share and how many to keep to himself, but he unloads as many as he can onto Crow, giving each the space it deserves. The semi-self-titled closer shifts the focus to Elverum’s daughter, born only months before Castrée’s diagnosis. This is not exactly a hopeful moment, more a pause. An acknowledgment that for all of the isolation and empty space, time will press on, however slowly.

For anyone who was ever remotely interested in Mount Eerie or the Microphones, A Crow Looked at Me is a must-listen. For these reasons, it didn’t strike me that Crow is part of the healing process but a prerequisite to it, like packing a bag before a long journey. The weight of the tragedy has not dissipated. It may never, certainly not completely.

thanks Paste

MOUNT EERIE – ” A Crow Looked At Me “

Posted: March 6, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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If you’ve have heard any of the songs from “A Crow Looked at Me” already, you’ll know that this is almost certainly the most heartbreaking, harrowing, beautiful album that will be released this year (and quite possibly any other year.) It’s about the loss of Mount Eerie main man Phil Elverum’s wife Geneviève, who died last year of pancreatic cancer, and the long, empty days that followed. Elverum explained the choice to release these songs in a long statement , which concludes thus: “There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’s why.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGESP0iePmQ

WRITTEN AND RECORDED
August 31st to Dec. 6th, 2016 in the same room where Geneviève died, using mostly her instruments, her guitar, her bass, her pick, her amp, her old family accordion, writing the words on her paper, looking out the same window.
Why share this much? Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger, about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love? Our little family bubble was so sacred for so long. We carefully held it behind a curtain of privacy when we’d go out and do our art and music selves, too special to share, especially in our hyper-shared imbalanced times. Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important. (I still don’t want to tell you our daughter’s name.) Then in May 2015 they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic, and the ground opened up. What matters now? we thought. Then on July 9th 2016 she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore. My internal moments felt like public property. The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver, a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known.
“Death Is Real” could be the name of this album. These cold mechanics of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an alienating, detached sharpness. But it is not the thing I want to remember. A crow did look at me. There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’s why.

MOUNT EERIE – ” This ” and ” MOUNT EERIE ” sampler

Posted: January 18, 2015 in MUSIC
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OFFICIAL VIDEO for “This” by Mount Eerie taken from the album “Sauna” check out Mount Eerie via soundcloud page, P.W. Elverum & Sun is the portal into the world for the various projects of Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie,the Microphones, etc.) and occasionally friends’ releases. The organization is based in Anacortes, Washington.

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