Mount Eerie - No Flashlight

Went to his art show in Seattle last Thursday. The subject was 'Utopia' (actually some long phrase with that in it but I can't remember) and his work was fascinating: letters and photographs and hand-drawn covers and handwritten lyrics and sheet music, hundreds of pieces of musical ephemera. He spoke for a while about the stuff and told some stories. Quite a interesting and likeable character. Should have asked him when the record was coming out.

Well, dude makes a point, Elverum's not so progressive. I don't agree with the 5, though. seems like a moody 5.
You put this shit in surround sound, it's definitely serene, paints an awesome backdrop.

Haven’t read the Wooden Wand review yet, but I thought the 8.0 was about right.

I think a 1.0 would be about right. Talk about an album of shit with nimrods running around it coo'ing "wowzers! psych folk!"

anybody know how the show in Anacortes went last week? I know Phil implored everyone not to come after it got picked up and publicized, just curious if anyone was there to do a write up or record it...

https://pwelverumandsun.bandcamp.com/album/a-crow-looked-at-me

this is probably going to be a depressing listen

That is devastating

Oh god this backstory

Mount Eerie, the longstanding musical outlet of Phil Elverum, has announced the release of A Crow Looked At Me. It will be released on Elverum’s label P.W. Elverum & Sun on March 24th 2017. The album is a deeply personal and unflinchingly honest reaction to the death of Elverum’s wife, the artist Geneviève Castrée, last year. He has shared “Real Death,” a candid expression of stark domestic grief that is unlike anything else in the Mount Eerie discography.

Elverum has shared the following statement about why he made A Crow Looked At Me, and why he is sharing it with the world:

“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.) 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.”

Elverum has stated that he will be playing these songs in front of audiences later in the year.

...

In 2015 Elverum’s wife, the French Canadian cartoonist and musician Geneviève Castrée, was diagnosed with a bad cancer just after giving birth to their first child. She died a year later. Elverum wrote and recored the album throughout the fall of 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.

The songs are about the brutal details of that experience, from the hospitalizations to the grieving, the specific domestic banalities that become existential in the context of such huge and abrupt loss. These songs are not fun. They are pretty and they are deep, and they find a love that prevails beneath the overwhelming and real sorrow. It is unlike anything else in the Mount Eerie catalog in its unvarnished expressions of personal grief, metaphor-free.

Yeah, this is just heartbreaking.

"Nothing wise or learned, just the described experience of living through unimaginable domestic obliteration, with names and dates"

That verse about the backpack she ordered for her daughter :(

"collapsed there on the front steps I wailed." I am sobbing.

Has always been amazing at conveying moments of being hit with a wave of emotion or sadness, but that verse is brutal.

another song from the album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r5y-6tapYo

christ this is gonna be brutal

cant bring myself to listen to this yet

I don't really know what to say about this but it is so strong and raw

man this song

This is brutal. So powerful.

I love Phil and will always support him...raw stuff

Yeah, likewise.

Phil was already incredibly direct but here he just immediately lets it know that "poetry is dumb" in light of what he's feeling the effect is unlike anything I've listened to before. I can't even really place the emotions listening to these songs and describing them as sad feels equally silly.

wrote a review of the show here. hard to do justice to how heavy it was.

Thanks for sharing that, very nice and thoughtful review.

I can't recall anticipating an album this much yet feeling almost 'scared' to listen to it...

Hi Fits,

Thank you! Really appreciate you posting that piece.

yeah, great piece!

v nice piece on the show.

wrote a review of the show here. hard to do justice to how heavy it was.

― fits

but you pretty much did! great writing, and i can tell you're v v well-versed in his musical output.

great piece, fits.

love that he walked out as soon as he was done

http://www.youtube.com/H2R2Ck8qKWM

Heartbreaking.

Sorry: https://youtu.be/H2R2Ck8qKWM

oof. hold on to the ones you love.

True words. I am actually nervous for this album... Ravens alone reduced me to a sobbing mess.. :-/

maybe i haven't seen any other recent pictures of him, but man Elverum looks like he's aged years and years in the new press pic on p4k. i gotta hold off on listening to this until it comes out... the first single was so brutal

absolutely terrific piece on the show up there, fits. i read it on a lunch break and sat there and cried into my burrito

these songs are just devastating to listen to. the backpack bit ...

he announced some tour dates today, in case anyone missed it:

04-04 Eugene, OR - WOW Hall
04-06 Big Sur, CA - Henry Miller Library
04-09 Santa Ana, CA - When We Were Young Fest @ Observatory
04-10 San Diego, CA - Irenic
04-11 Los Angeles, CA - The Masonic Lodge @ Hollywood Forever
04-14 Oakland, CA - Starline Social Club
04-17 Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios
04-18 Olympia, WA - Obsidian
04-12-14 Arcosanti, AZ - FORM Arcosanti

Seems like he has no intention of coming back to Vancouver after that shambolic show years back. I'm with flappy bird - want to listen to this and will support him $, but there's so much grief and death in our culture, that I'm not sure I can handle this atm.

http://pitchfork.com/features/profile/10034-death-is-real-mount-eeries-phil-elverum-copes-with-unspeakable-tragedy/

One hell of a read.

It is.

And without trying to beat a point into the ground, that it's Jayson Greene doing this story is vitally important. If you don't know why:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/opinion/sunday/children-dont-always-live.html

^ jesus, i had no idea. the p4k feature is great, dreading the day i listen to A Crow Looked at Me for the first time

knowing that makes a harrowing interview even more powerful.

To me this was the key moment:

“I sometimes think about the life that my daughter will have with no mom,” he wonders. “What does it mean to have a ghost mom? Not that I can do anything differently about it. But it’s an inferior version of what we had planned, you know? This was not our top choice.” We both crack up; grief is funny sometimes.

Jayson is one of the best writers in the game right now; I am in awe of everything he writes

Jayson was the perfect choice for such an intimate interview. Could not have been penned better by any other writer.

Excellent article, it's rare to see Phil this candid

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/phil-elverum-on-creating-art-from-grief/

That Elverum piece was fabulous - so understated and clear-eyed. And I had no idea about Jayson Greene's daughter. Dear god. One would hope for an ounce of such humility and humanity in the face of such tragedy.

streaming on npr

http://www.npr.org/2017/03/16/520013269/first-listen-mount-eerie-a-crow-looked-at-me

Fuck, this is beautiful

yeah, hard to find words for this as a whole but Soria Moria is just breathtaking

http://www.metacritic.com/music/a-crow-looked-at-me/mount-eerie

So this has a 96 on metacritic. Looks like we've got a year-end list juggernaut on our hands.

This album has such potent observational details and emotional heft. Don't think I'll ever listen to it again, but I'm glad Phil can express this way.

this is all i've listened to this week; something hypnotic about it, different guitar lines and lyrics follow me after each listen. is an astonishing work, wouldn't envy anyone who has to review it though.

joanne kyger, whose poem is on the cover, died like two days before the album came out :-/

I too have been listening to this all week. I've been a fan of his work forever but yeah, this is different. It reminds me a bit of my experience with Bowie's 'Blackstar' in that the music is inseparable from what it's about and I wonder if I would feel the same if the narrative was more open to interpretation.

as different as it is though, no one else could make something so understated yet devastating. think this is a really good, thoughtful review about it's relation to his previous work:

http://www.popmatters.com/review/mount-eerie-a-crow-looked-at-me/

am curious about the experience of people new to elverum, hard for me to untangle this from having followed him for years.

this is amazing - the way it plays, rather than wallows, in grief is key to it, plus the brilliant songwriting and arrangements. imo far more devastating than other 'tragedy response' albums of recent years

This album has such potent observational details and emotional heft. Don't think I'll ever listen to it again, but I'm glad Phil can express this way.

― Carlotta's Portrait (Ross), Friday, 24 March 2017 19:47 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I listened to the album once over the weekend and this is exactly how I feel about it.

Will certainly listen again. Just as the album seems to be flagging those last three tracks come in and they're amazing

all fails
my knees fail
my brain fails
words fail

got through the first 4 songs on this and felt completely drained. i can't get through it. waves of blank depression and meaningless sadness. the NYT review of this is spot on - this isn't "art" really, because art is concerned with aesthetics. it just is. the scariest thing about it is i understand what he said after his wife death - everything lost meaning, it all became absurd. this makes Blackstar look like a party. that's a man staring death in the face, one last rattle and rage. this is soul-sucking.

"It just is."

Yes, it just is. It is also beyond admirable, amazing, soul crushingly honest and extremely uncomfortable to witness. It shakes me up completely and indeed sucks my soul bone dry. Only to fill it up till it overflows with love for life, love for love.

If that is not art, I honestly do not know what is, and I probably do not even care about discussing it. Because life is literally too short.

i'm interviewing Phil soon and i have no idea how to do it. any insights welcome.

Oof. That sounds like once a dream gig turned into a nightmare. Not literally a nightmare, I think Elverum is awesome. But the grief is so all encompassing it's not even an elephant in the room, it is simply unavoidable. A dinosaur of grief crushing you.

But I think you can still have a very meaningful conversation with him. You could ask him about how he feels, now that he put this album out there, it being reviewed as a piece of art, or work, and how that affects him, how that 'response' makes him reflect on the album. The dynamic of putting such a personal thing out in the world is something that would interest me, to read about.

What medium are you writing this for?

a print paper...will be online, too, of course

thanks for the thoughts, LBI. we'll certainly cover that kind of stuff, i'm sure. i'm interested, too.

what i find most fascinating by the whole thing is his response to this loss in his life - that he feels "ripped open" and exposed, so why not just record these songs and play them and talk about them, etc. "My internal moments felt like public property," he has said. TO BE VERY VERY CLEAR: he should grieve exactly how he feels is right. period. and i think "talking about it" is generally thought of as healthy, but it's not necessarily a *typical* reaction, particularly for someone who is somewhat of a public figure.

anyway, i am a human being with loved ones, i figure we'll just have a conversation and i'll go where it leads.

I agree with pretty much all of that and I think it's fine to have doubts. Christ, I'm sure he had them, too (about going in at all, let alone making all this 'public').

I think, essentially, I find it too uncomfortable to listen to. It's not intrusive, as such, as Elverum has chosen to make his grief work public, but the simple fact of being party to watching someone trying to give voice to, to give language to, something which evades that impulse induces a kind of shame. Or it's like that thing that during one of the first American expeditions to the moon, an astronaut accidentally pointed his camera at the sun, which immediately burned out the camera's cells. It was as if the camera couldn't tolerate the source or purity of what its own raison d’etre is to capture and relay.

I took No Flashlight as a reference to being in the dark but maybe it's more about having stared at the very centre of things and having one's cells burnt out. Or both of those things.

this is amazing - the way it plays, rather than wallows, in grief is key to it

I agree with this. I find it sad and intense but not as bleak as others seem to, just relentlessly real. Some of it is even kinda wry? "Do the people around me want to keep hearing about my dead wife?"

Yeah, agree with this ^

it's so sad, but i don't struggle to listen to it ... except maybe the part about the backpack. that's tough.

I think Phil does manage to have a good sense of humour and levity despite the heartbreak, which does make the album easier to listen to.

Personally still I don't feel compelled to listen to it regularly, I just majorly hope it has helped him.

I am not sure whether I agree that "unlike many works about grief, though, there is no glance towards redemptive larger meaning, which makes it all the more bracing". I think that actually in recent years there were a lot of critically acclaimed albums (particularly Carrie & Lowell and Skeleton Tree) that seemed to acknowledge meaninglessness of death and they were also a lot less poetical, artistic and a lot more minimalistic than previous records of those artists. But in my opinion this album in a way none of those albums have before poses the question that seemed to be beside the point - after all is it art or is it not art? Some people here find it unlistenable. Some people find it strangely alluring, I actually have listened to this quite a bit. We can probably all agree it's not meant to be art and it doesn't even try, musically or lyrically, to be art, it doesn't offer any explanation, solace, there's really nothing to be learned from it and most people listening probably won't even be able to emphatise with what Phil has gone trough but in the end isn't communicating reality what art is all about? In My Chasms Phil asks "do the people around me want to keep hearing about my dead wife?" and for some reason, yeah, they do. :|

I guess what I am trying to say is it's really hard and maybe even shameful to pinpoint what exactly I am getting out of this album

Nice post piramjida

This is also Phil's most functional album yet, I think. Musically and arrangement-wise it's as spare as some of his live recordings and unadorned - which serves the content of the songs and emotion well. It probably wouldn't make much sense to be as layered or particular as his other work.

I still have put off listening to it, but i found even listening to two of my absolutely favourite Phil songs ("Don't Smoke" and "Get Off The Internet") all of a sudden way more heavy, given their life-is-short sentiments.

The very fact that this album exists blows my mind most of the time. The idea of this just being out there, unprotected. It is real. I have this on vinyl, it is in my hands and it's spinning now. A not so gentle reminder of naked, ugly, barren, terrible death; Phil doesn't even try to portray death in a "romantic" way, and he shouldn't, because it's so stark and heartbreaking and real. This really makes me hate any 'romantic' notion of death. In movies, in music, in culture. Which was always something to cling to (in dire need, seek the 'romantic' in things, in bad things, in death...). Doesn't happen here.

Me loving this album leaves me feeling completely inadequate as a human being dealing with loss. I still have no single clue what to do with this album, how to feel listening to it. It feels like I need to either put up a fight or give it up all together. Like there is no leeway, no middle ground. This schism, perhaps, is precisely the point. Nothing makes sense, and that's ok, and here's why etc.

Death is real.

Amazing album

When I was much younger "Maps" by Microphones helped me deal with break up blues.

I hope Phil is able to process what happened and I'll always support him, expressing through art is a gift in the worse of times. I hope he finds peace

this album is utterly devastating and awfully difficult to get through. it's ACCURATE which is a strange thing to say about art but it feels right to say so.

european tour coming up, I hope for his sake he's playing plenty of things besides this album

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKHVWR7XcAY9zMI.jpg

i would guess he is not. he probably will one day, but i think for now he feels like these songs are the only songs he has.

i am doing some educated speculating, of course.

Lot of Norway shows

great news, he's not just playing songs from a Crow...

By the time Elverum had left the stage, he had played an equal number of album and non-album songs, all about Geneviève.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/in-a-room-listening-to-phil-elverum-sing-about-his-wifes-death

Quick question, the last song on A Crow Looked... is the first track to actually say 'Geneviève' right?

The non album songs on this tour (ie new songs, about Geneviève) are of much the same texture and content. And beautiful. But definitely not a reprieve from those feelings.

my friend saw him recently and the material he is playing is in line with what sean is saying. I saw Phil years back when he was first debuting Mt. Eerie and at that time he only played one recognizable song, "The Blow Pt. 2" and the rest was new songs/songs off newer live records. Not sure he would ever really go back to Microphones material, for better or worse

I watched a video of the new song he's been opening all his shows with recently, "Distortion." good god, what a song - 11 minutes long, essentially one finger picked guitar figure, devastating words just tumbling out... i haven't listened to A Crow Looked at Me since it came out, I couldn't make it past 4 songs...

yes I've listened to it once all the way through and am not sure when I'll feel like listening again. I saw him play with genevieve/woelv years ago and likewise didn't recognise much at all, it was fantastically low key: he wandered around barefoot meandering in and out of songs; she got everyone to harmonise with her. it seems like it will be such a strange gig

re: my last post, i was thinking songs from his past. non-album songs written since G's death, yes, *that* makes sense.

i still think he may never go back to stuff he wrote before she passed.

I'm seeing him at the Le Guess Who? festival. I have played his latest lp fairly often, it's a personal thing, the way he translates grief into song just resonates with me. But that 11 minute 'Distortion' video, I saw it too, is just too much. I don't know if I can bear it, live.

yeah i mean i get that Phil needs to go through these emotions to heal and I would never judge that, but I dunno, I can't listen to music in this tone much these days. I remember putting it on for a friend and he told me to turn it off in one second flat. It's understandably a downer

I was listening to a Slowdive artist radio station on Spotify on the way home on the bus and "Real Death" came up and Lord that song is like a punch in the gut

I really did like this the one time I listened through it, and I will listen to it again soon, perhaps

new album Now Only out March 16.

1. Tintin in Tibet
2. Distortion
3. Now Only
4. Earth
5. Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup
6. Crow, Pt. 2

live versions of:

tintin in tibet and
distortion

xp this is... unexpected. Did not expect him to return this quick. Though thinking about it, it's the most logical and best thing for him to do.

Yeah I'm really glad he's doing this, wasn't expecting it either but he played at least half of these songs (if not all of them) throughout his tour last year. I can't wait to hear "Distortion," that song is stunning, and one I've listened to more than anything on A Crow Looked at Me. that record is remarkable, but I can't listen to it. I've never heard or seen anything that approaches the raw grief and directness of that record, it's unbearable for me to listen to. "Distortion" is more refined and completely captivating.

I'm shying away from the live youtube videos I think, and rather have the new songs served raw on my plate. Though "new songs" feels odd to say: A Crow Looked At Me has lived with me all year, and yet it still feels unrelentingly new every time I play it. I can see why you'd have a hard time listening to it; I had that, at first. Now I mostly prefer to live inside it and dread everything that's outside of it.

in montreal he said with his newest songs he wanted to tell people more about genevieve (rather than mostly meditating on her death)... not sure if this is still how he envisions it.

I actually once watched a video of "Distortion" in full once. Bits and pieces here and there, but still more than ACLAM- I've still only gotten 4 songs into that.

..
lol i just realized the acronym is ACLAM. takes the edge off tbh

A BOLD CLAM

Crow looked at me is the only mt eerie I wouldn't relisten to

thought Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup was fantastic when I heard it live

"Distortion" is up here now:

https://soundcloud.com/p-w-elverum

It just struck me that Elverum is basically doing the same thing Mark Kozelek now does - wistful first-person autobiographical narratives over drifting guitar-based instrumentals - only it's great instead of terrible

yeah, that's exactly how i described A CLAM to a friend

in montreal he said with his newest songs he wanted to tell people more about genevieve (rather than mostly meditating on her death)... not sure if this is still how he envisions it.

― sean gramophone, Wednesday, January 17, 2018 12:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always thought it was interesting that Phil didn't straight out say her name until the last song on ACLAM

wow that new track is great

A Crow Looked At Me was good but also not something I really ever want to listen to again

simon - i recall reading that phil was very much influenced by kozelek for his approach of late. new cover art seems very eric's trip/elevator to hell inspired, too - one of his biggest influences...

phil's always been direct and down-to-earth, anyway. i think his sense of humour was lost on a lot of people at a show i went to last year (leeds, UK). i suppose it was very much a traveling funeral for genevieve. i left feeling love, though. it was also very admirable to see him working his own merch stand both before and after his set. phil's always been very real and one of the hardest working independent musicians i know of since day one.

also to digress some: hello ILM it feels like this is the only forum on the internet i personally really visit anymore. i was chatting with kiran leonard (manchester musician and guitar player on moshi moshi) about how the centralized internet has led to people straying away from forums and smaller communities. feels like about ten years ago last.fm and other places were so much more active. i miss forums a lot and facebook groups just don't feel like good communities anymore!

that leeds show wrecked me but i enjoyed the weird sound of the audience realising it was ok to laugh. also hi

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/08/590957789/first-listen-mount-eerie-now-only

on first listen this is incredible and powerful, and i think i'll be spending much more time with it than A Crow Looked At Me

so far, file under 'much like the last one', which is like, nice and all, but gruelling

I miss his microphones stuff

i think "distortion" is one of his most microphone-y songs in a while, in it's own way.

Distortion is amazing, might be his masterpiece

i have to say, i don't really like the arrangements for "now only" and the first half of "earth", and they work against the lyrics in a way that seems intentional but that also out of character with the rest of the album (and the last). but really that's a small portion of the album, and it's bookended by the excellent pair of openers and the "crow pt 2" at the end

the stretch from 3:00-end of "Earth" is some of the most beautiful music he's recorded, i think. and "Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup" also opens up about halfway into something that i like more (and the paintings he's talking about are great as well)

Flappy ??? Masterpiece? Surely that's the glow

The song

you mean pt 1 or 2?

1

The way the drums phase rules my life

i love 1 as well. i always look forward to the closing loop with organ, creaking chair and the water being poured, the perfect sound setting for his imagery about finding shelter at the bottom of the ocean

On the cold dark ocean floor
I felt warmth from behind a door
I asked to come inside
And the glow replied

and somehow pt 2 is just as good, in a completely different way. i'm not even sure which one i'd pick.

Had the pleasure of seeing him play raw versions of many of these songs last year which may have been one of the saddest/most life affirming concert experiences that I've ever had. But holy hell has he transformed a lot of them. Powerful, beautiful, sad, all at once. "Now Only" is unreal. I'm down for his journey through grief. He's given us a lot of great music over the years, I'm interested to see where this goes. Love the album after one listen.

Do people actually enjoy this? This is masochistic.

Eh it's complicated. I guess enjoy isn't the word. I probably only made it through the last one once in full. I think i cried while listening to last album on the train the first time that I heard it. And the live show was painfully sad. But I also feel like it seems therapeutic for him and I'm getting a lot out of it so...I dunno, it's like a heightened version of traditionally sad music. I can't listen to it all the time but when I want to go through the fire, he touches on grief in a way i haven't really heard other musicians do. And the new one has fairly elaborate compositions so it's beginning to feel like music again, but yeah it's complicated and I don't really know if I do enjoy it but it certainly floors me.

Do people actually enjoy this? This is masochistic.

FWIW, on first listen, I found this new one less overtly painful than the last, a little more digressive maybe?

I'm with Moka. I appreciate Phil's need to heal but (perhaps selfishly) my musical interests rarely go to bleak places these days, the world is fucked enough as is to wallow in it

ross, you should jump on that Andrew WK bandwagon we've got going

yessss

andrew wk should visit phil and give him a hug and a nice talk and phil will be much happier GUARANTEED

Okay Simon :)

https://i.imgur.com/MVWsl8f.jpg
In a painting from around 1915 called "Midsummer Eve Bonfire" by Nikolai Astrup that shines on my computer screen in 2017 in the awful July night
The house is finally quiet and still with the child asleep upstairs so I sit and notice the painting of bonfires on the hillside and hanging smoke in the valleys
Wrapping back up through the fjords at dusk, offering like scars of mist draped along the ridges of couples dancing in the green twilight around fires
And in the water below, the reflections of other fires from other parties illuminate the depths and glitter shining and alone
Everyone is laughing and there is music and a man climbs up the hill pulling a juniper down to throw into the fire to make some sparks rise up to join the stars
These people in the painting believed in magic and earth
And they all knew loss, and they all came to the fire

I saw myself in this one young woman in the foreground
With a look of desolation and a body that looked pregnant as she leaned against the moss of a rock soft to the side apart from all the people celebrating midsummer

I knew her person was gone just like me
And just like me she looked across at the fires from far away and wanted something in their light to say:
"Live your life and if you don't the ground is definitely ready at any moment to open up again, to swallow you back in, to digest you back into something useful for somebody"
And meanwhile above the Norwegians dancing in the twilight the permanent white snow gleamed
You used to call me "Neige Éternelle."

https://i.imgur.com/xZNkFWU.jpg
There's another Nikolai Astrup painting from 1920, called "Foxgloves" that hangs on the fridge
And I look at it every morning and every night before bed
Some trees have been cut down next to a stream flowing through a birch brow in late spring
And two girls that look like you gather berries and baskets hunched over like young animals, grazing
With their red dressed against the white birch three trunks interweaving
Beneath the cluttering leaves, the three stumps in the foreground remind me that everything is fleeting
As if reminding is what I need

xp drum phasing on glow pt 1 yes! 'it was hot we stayed in the water' will always be my favourite work of phil's. it's so creative in arrangement but still fairly minimal. im not a vinyl listener regularly but its one of those that just sound better on LP.

as far as latest releases, i suppose it's emotional exertion as it always has been with phil. it's strange to me how listeners are surprised of the explicit confessional nature of the past two records. he spilled his guts years ago in the Dawn journal/CD, and has always been frank and earnest in lyrics. of course there's going to be a lot of heartfelt emotional vomit, and given the nature it's a challenging listen... phils never worked a regular job in his life -- he's not going about things any differently than he has ever done, it's all he's ever known. given his self-sufficiency, honesty and commitment (manning merch stalls before and after his own shows!) he's more worthwhile of respect than any other independent musician i can think of.

if the new records are too heavy for you maybe consider buying previous releases directly from his store to offer support

i hope i dont sound condescending -- the microphones just changed my life and were instrumental in music appraisal, ethics and practice for me!

Feel absolutely the same bud ^ water is my favourite record too

i'm with Moka, i couldn't get past the first 4 songs on crow, tho i also agree with Simon that this record is more listenable, less raw material. and yea i'm happy for Phil blah blah blah but at least for me the verbose and very detailed lyrics prevent me from accessing this material on a universal emotional level. even something like John Lennon's first solo album, yeah he's singing about his mom and dad and the Beatles, but the song titles and lyrics are very elemental: Mother, Isolation, Remember, Love, God... and I agree with something meaulnes said on the Grouper thread re: her record Ruins. that one is deeply personal, stripped down, very somber... but her lyrics are not easily distinguishable, and when they are, they're of a more general nature (i.e. "every time i see you, i have to pretend i don't / it's funny when we fuck up, no one really has to care") than anything on these Mount Eerie records.

I feel like it's abusive toward a listener-with-a-critical ear to inflict upon them music like this. Music that is impossible to criticize, because it's come from a point of grieving, and this is how it feels, unadorned and unpoetic-- to somebody who is tangentially acquainted with the man and the deceased, this is frustrating music-- for me. Glad it moves others. I do not want to listen to this music ever but I would cook the biggest best meal for Phil and babysit for him whenever he needs

yeah. but the artist's impulse to channel grief & negative energy into something productive is very real. i completely understand the intent and purpose but will never listen to it.

not getting accusatory but I wonder about the underlying attitude to death and/or art that leads ppl to hear heartbreakingly tender expressions of grief as masochistic or abusive

the fact that I found the last album hard to listen to speaks to my failing to face the intensity of it, not to a failure to express himself in a more palatable manner

I don't understand the surprise, it's as if people think he could or should have done something else. his insistence on being the same gentle, self-aware, ironic, simple, warm person is what makes these songs so devastating, but also inspiring, like if Phil can keep being Phil through this then mb there's hope for the rest of us

echoing meaulnes there. I'll echo KM too and say the song about the astrup paintings is really special

i don't think it's surprising, and i don't think the intent was masochistic or abusive, it's just the effect. and

the fact that I found the last album hard to listen to speaks to my failing to face the intensity of it, not to a failure to express himself in a more palatable manner

it's not a failing of the album, or an indictment, it's just that vicariously experiencing intense unfiltered grief feels horrible (to me)

some bizarre hubris in this thread, as if it matters even one tiny little bit what effect this music has on anyone besides Phil

otm, static. i've said my piece already. phil is not making music to suit you.

i mean if you're sharing art then yeah it matters what effect this music has on others. not that it takes away from what it does for the artist but xp

although "for" is an interesting word, and i guess i have mixed feelings about what it "means" elsewhere, e.g. the new camp cope record not being "for" cis white men. maybe it's hypocritical of me but it feels easier to say it doesn't matter what the people a record isn't for in that sense think than in this case bc it's a kind of person, a range of experience to which it testifies (and thus a range to which it doesn't) as opposed to one single person's, which. if no one else's opinion matters, then the point of sharing the art is for purely transactional purposes. which is not a bad thing, i'd like to support phil, but certainly a piece of art has the ability to be more than that

and thus should be able to be judged on it. if that's the compromise of sharing art w the world, i think it's a fair trade for the medium's inherent commhnication. and i feel like if you don't feel that way it'd be kind of disgusting to listen to it?

maybe "disgusting" is too strong but... weird. idk

agree with the above. the notion that it's hubristic or even insensitive to criticise this as music is deranged

phil's a big lad, he can look after himself

you don’t have to twist yourself into a pretzel justifying your criticism. Phil put this music out, we didn’t break into his house & listen to it. the idea of any music being beyond reproach is incredibly silly

i didn't say it's insensitive or unfair to criticize the music. i said it doesn't matter what anyone thinks or feels about this music except Phil.

i was reacting to this bs: "I feel like it's abusive toward a listener-with-a-critical ear to inflict upon them music like this."

reading your own interpretation into others' words is deranged and silly.

to clarify, i disagree w both statements

i brought up judgment bc if no one else's opinion matters, there's no point in criticism. not that it's wrong, just meaningless, both of which don't work for me

i didn't say it's insensitive or unfair to criticize the music. i said it doesn't matter what anyone thinks or feels about this music except Phil.

this applies to all music criticism. eric otm

http://www.talkhouse.com/autographing-im-sorry-please-no-id-much-rather-not-sign-record-sorry-please/

thinking back to the times when i would ask artists for autographs, age ~13-15, these weren't just "regular people": these were adults who looked cool as hell who made music that stirred your teenage soul who were in town for one night only. they were archetypal cool role models who inspired you to start a band. if they weren't my parents or teachers or used book and camera store clerks, how would i have any sort of regular social relationship with them?

as an adult i definitely sympathize with phil's position but i do hope that it doesn't hurt his soul when teenagers ask for his autograph

i said it doesn't matter what anyone thinks or feels about this music except Phil.

on a message board with people with opinions about music

good review: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mount-eerie-now-only/

it does a better job of describing how 'now only' is different in concept and execution than "a crow looked at me", and it's clear the writer is deeply familiar with elverum's music

This album is astonishing

certainly different to the last, but maybe just as good.

I really love this album, much more than ACLAM which I respect but never really want to listen to. possibly my favourite of his since The Glow pt. 2

it feels more melodic than ACLAM and the long track lengths give room for the music to shift with the lyrics. the lyrics being a bit greater in scope than just the raw grief does help to make it an easier listen

He figured out how to make Kozelek's current shtick listenable/meaningful.

Yeah the similarities to Mark Kozelek's recent stuff are definitely there, but such different dudes. The paintings song is the one I'm going back again and again. Thanks to the poster upthread who posted the image also.

no prob! i didn't know anything Astrup before hearing the song. His work is amazing and I'd love to see it in person. "Midsummer Eve Bonfire" is actually a series of paintings, so it took a while to figure out which one he was referring to specifically.

although i do think that Now Only is definitely so much more than just ACLAM pt 2, i can definitely sympathize with those upthread who still find the subject matter too uncomfortable to bear. like ufo said, the lyrics have an expanded scope, but there are still lots of very intense, painful, ACLAM-style passages.

lots of press/interviews for Now Only that i haven't gotten around to reading yet:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/03/mount-eerie-now-only-interview-phil-elverum/555485/

Totally agree, in that people might refrain from the new one, but 'Now Only' is indeed so much more that ACLAM pt 2. We have a rolling worst P4K thread, wholly justified, but that review you posted KM is absolutely wonderful. So understanding, down to the nitty-gritty, and so compassionate in judging this new album on its merits, instead of just on its narrative. The latter, I can see why, would scare away a lot of people. But 'Now Only' is a beautiful beast, in its own right.

from that atlantic interview, it sounds like there might be more to come in this vein:

Kornhaber: Was there any trepidation about doing two albums in a row in the same mode, on this same topic?

Elverum: Not at all. It wasn’t over. I had more to say still. And I didn’t want to stay in that feeling of A Crow Looked at Me. I knew the only way out of it was to continue writing songs. There wasn’t even really a gap in the production. I just kept writing.

I almost made Now Only a lot longer—there was this one song I’ve been trying to write for a long time, and I’m still chewing on that. That would be part three. Three seems like a good number to wrap up with and then do something else.

Kornhaber: So it might be a trilogy.

Elverum: Maybe, but I’m not holding too tight to that idea. I have been feeling happier lately, and more healed. I don’t think there’s going to be an end to grief. It’s a lifelong process and this loss will be with me forever. But lately I’ve been not dwelling in it so much.

in a reddit AMA recently he mentioned that Benji was an influence on the lyrics of the last two albums, as it helped him to realise that poetry and metaphor could be abandoned for blank honesty

of course, this album is much much better than any of Kozelek's recent material

there's a little bit on that in the atlantic interview, too:

Kornhaber: Death is one of the great topics of art through history. Did anything about how culture has portrayed grief ring false to you once you went through it yourself?

Elverum: It all felt false. In my time of being just destroyed, I went through all my poetry books and nothing spoke to me.

No, that’s not true—there’s this one Gary Snyder poem [“Go Now”] that cracked things open for me in a really useful way. It’s written basically in the same style as A Crow Looked at Me, very graphic about the mechanics of disease and the death of his wife: the cremation, the smell, her teeth jutting out. No poetry involved. Just describing it. That opened up for me the idea of I don’t have to interpret this. I don’t have to make it pretty or find wisdom in it at all. It’s okay to just describe what happened, then leave it at that. There’s no lesson.

Listened to this straight through today, sat in my local university library staring st the snow. It was perfect. I can remember entire sections of the lyrics, impressionistically at least - like it was transfusion as much as listening. Almost tempted to say I'll never listen to it again.

Meet Phil Elverum, Michelle Williams’s husband. The actress married the acclaimed singer-songwriter (who performs as Mount Eerie) this month. https://t.co/qNBmtHFxIr

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) July 26, 2018

uh

WOW

I really don't care about this sort of thing at all normally but this is cuet, good for them imo

yeah good for them! also what

yeah, it's like cool, but also, wait what?

i know this is terrible but i'm imagining the next album being a similarly blunt, stream-of-conscious style take on meeting billy crystal backstage at the people's choice awards or something

huh, shitty to name his daughter when he seemed pretty against it in every interview from the past couple of years, hope they're all happy though.

Relevant section from the main article:

By the time you read this, she and her partner, singer-songwriter Phil Elverum, whom she met through a mutual friend, will have been married in a secret ceremony in the Adirondacks, witnessed by only a handful of friends and their two daughters. Her new husband, an indie musician who records and performs under the name Mount Eerie (and, before that, the Microphones), also lost a partner in tragic circumstances while parenting a small child. His late wife, illustrator and musician Geneviève Castrée, was diagnosed with inoperable stage-4 pancreatic cancer in 2015, four months after the birth of their daughter, and the two very private artists went public with a GoFundMe page to help defray medical costs. Castrée died 13 months later, in July 2016, leaving Elverum with an 18-month-old daughter. In the past two years, he has released two raw, critically acclaimed albums, A Crow Looked at Me and Now Only, that unflinchingly explore grief, death, and the utility of art in the face of loss. Williams calls her relationship with Elverum “very sacred and very special.” In July, he packed up his home in Anacortes, Washington, and drove across the country to live with her and their daughters in Brooklyn.

“I never gave up on love,” she later tells me, saying that she has spent the 10 years since Ledger’s death looking for the kind of “radical acceptance” she felt from him. “I always say to Matilda, ‘Your dad loved me before anybody thought I was talented, or pretty, or had nice clothes.’ ” I can hear her voice crack. She sometimes can’t believe that she’s found this kind of love, at last. “Obviously I’ve never once in my life talked about a relationship,” she says, “but Phil isn’t anyone else. And that’s worth something. Ultimately the way he loves me is the way I want to live my life on the whole. I work to be free inside of the moment. I parent to let Matilda feel free to be herself, and I am finally loved by someone who makes me feel free.”

Williams decided to open up about her relationship, as she did about her income, on the chance that other women might find hope or instruction in her story. “I don’t really want to talk about any of it,” she says. “But there’s that tease, that lure, that’s like, What if this helps somebody? What if somebody who has always journeyed in this way, who has struggled as much as I struggled, and looked as much as I looked, finds something that helps them?” In the end, she says, what she’s learned is simple: “Don’t settle. Don’t settle for something that feels like a prison, or is hard, or hurts you,” she says. “If it doesn’t feel like love, it’s not love.”

imagining the next album being a similarly blunt, stream-of-conscious style take on meeting billy crystal backstage at the people's choice awards or something

Sheryl Crow Looked At Me

lol

well, as others have said, good for them! i don't know anything about michelle williams but from that little snippet she seems cool

nice to think about greatest showman money funding 50 more mount eerie records

Damn

This is cool

Also the Adirondacks rule, so good choice.

Amazing news

It's weird feeling so happy about two people I've never met but ya, this is really sweet.

lol @ all these "Who is Phil Elverum?" articles popping up though.

Sheryl Crow Looked At Me

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Thursday, July 26, 2018 6:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:D

Yeah this is amazing news, good for him.

Yeah really happy for Phil, one of the nicest guys I have ever met in music.

This is cool news, very happy for both of them!

viva michelverum

whoa

I really liked this piece: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/love-is-real-on-phil-elverum-marrying-michelle-williams/

I think Now Only is probably the best thing Phil has ever made

really great timeline in the new Exclaim from his inception to newest record. How is the new one then, i am still suck on microphones as my favourite records, though ocean roar and the companion album blew me away

*stuck

i enjoyed this internet video of 'the microphones' (new lyrics at the start?) and am excited to see phil play in a couple of weeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFktCAxQj8M

It starts with kd lang's "constant craving". There's a new take on the "took my shirt off" verse at the end though... at least I haven't heard either of these things in this song before. Interesting!

He played a ~20-minute new song at the start of the set that was basically an autobiography of the Microphones '95-'03, played a handful of old songs (incl. "Lanterns," "I Cut My Hands Off"), and then closed with another new songs that was a pretty stark and direct accounting of his past year and break-up and return home...

thanks for that fits!

of course! suffice to say the show was really something special, and the new songs are both great--if a lot more like his recent rambling mode with Mount Eerie than like anything Microphones (a distinction he discusses within the song at one point)--I hope he records them

haha knew big phil wouldn't tough out the east coast. take the man out of PNW but you can't take the PNW out of the man.

Correction to what I said about there being new lyrics in that video... that was a bit of "The Glow Pt. 2 (sequel)"!

ldn show last night, phil opened with the aforementioned microphones song then played about ten new songs - all very lyric heavy like the last couple of records seemingly all about the last year or so. friend spoke to the promoter and apparently he was able to come over for the one off show because he's been working with gaelic singers in ireland, which is v intriguing... anyway show was fantastic, really enjoyed it

shit i had no idea he was playing london last night. or been working in ireland.

was just about to chime in to ask if anybody went to the london show. i love that i can rely on on ilxor as my sole portal for contemporary music news.

wish i could give more detail but i was a little drunk

new album Lost Wisdom pt.2 out 8 November, collaborating with Julie Doiron again like on the original Lost Wisdom

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

i really like the single "Love Without Possession", and i think Now Only is the best thing he's ever done so i'm very much looking forward to this.

can't listen atm but statement reads like these are the songs played live recently, is the single in similar style to the last two records?

oh!!! he played 2 shows with Julie in Montreal on Sunday - they still seemed a bit shaky so I didn't think they had recorded together (as much as i hoped)

beautiful and heartbreaking songs, mostly about the end of his recent relationship. (he seems upset about it still.)

it's more major key and the melodies are more direct and less rambling than anything on the last two, while the lyrics aren't so stream of consciousness narrative in style. it's still a fairly sparse folk song that gets going a little bit in a wonderful moment towards the end, it's not that removed but i prefer it to anything on A Crow Looked At Me to actually listen to already

Not to be confused with the song "Lost Wisdom Pt 2" from 2009 album "Wind's Poem". Or maybe it is. Looking forward to this!

Didn't recent shows have a long song dealing with his recent divorce, sort of in the style of Now Only? His press release text makes it sound like there won't be any of that sort of thing here, but then there's only 8 songs? It doesn't exactly sound like he's going "back" to his previous sort of material either. Phil will just continue to Phil. Really glad to hear of another project

the track times are on itunes - there's one 7-minute track but the rest are pretty short and it's only 31 minutes as a whole

he played the AMAZING super-long new song that he's been touring with ("The Microphones 2019"?) at one of the shows on Sunday, but he said it wasn't finished. it definitely felt thematically different than the other stuff - less about MW and more about nostalgia/looking backward from 2019 to when he was 17, 27, etc.

the recent live ones about the breakup were fairly long, assume these are different then

aw man, i didn't know they divorced. what a bummer.

there's so much ephemera on his bandcamp page, from shitty early tapes to random live shows to recordings with string

quartets

this song is v beautiful

aye.

I saw the back cover of the album on the Twitter promo posts. It says recorded mostly at the end of May - so before "The Microphones" played What the Heck Fest and debuted some of that longer, newer? stuff.

Phil's site has had something called "Pink Light" under "upcoming" for a while. Given that this has a song called that, I guess this is that. Also "pink light" are the last words on the first Lost Wisdom album. I listened to it tonight for the first time in ages. That was probably his most unsettling work up to that point and I never went back to it much, despite being a big fan of him and Julie. This new song is a prettier thing.

i don't really like the first Lost Wisdom much, it's ok but a pretty minor work and i definitely prefer the Dawn versions of the tracks that were on both.

everytime i put lost wisdom (pt. 1) on i'm there in the living room with julie and phil and fred. three people kneeling by the tape recorder, singing live. it sounds like dirty socks, wooden floor, rain on the window to me and it plays out so perfectly.

Lost Wisdom 1 is... my favourite Mount Eerie album?

yea it's my favourite too, i also love how lived-in sounding it is. the songs are so haunting and memorable. new single is just as good

it definitely had a sustained vibe. I'd think I'm in a minority of Elverum fans nowadays, not going in so much for the hauntedness of it all.

it definitely had a sustained vibe

one thing that phil really excels at is creating a sustained vibe for each of his releases. he covers more musical ground than his non-fans would probably know, but for each album he manages to create really coherent and complementary collections of songs

Definitely. Most of them have a wider palate than Lost Wisdom but still hang together so well. You can get lost in any of them.

palette

they're like a pallet full of sound from a fog filled netherworld

not really feeling this new one

https://youtu.be/LsvQkuwMb0Y

Album is out. Oof. Phil misses Michelle. It's pretty but it's another tough listen.

it's lower key than Now Only, which is his career peak imo, but i'm still enjoying it and certainly more than the first Lost Wisdom

Peak eh? I liked it a lot, bought the record, but I can't spend a load of time with these things. Anyway the first song put out from this new one, "Love Without Possession" is my favorite of his in years. Gorgeous.

After that plus the name of this project, I was surprised that it is basically Now Only pt2 featuring Julie Doiron... that doesn't have the same ring to it though. I do look forward to listening more when I'm in the mood. Some pretty stunning moments here.

Is this the default Mt Eerie thread?

I don’t know anything about this music but my good friend is selling a job lot of early stuff - all the proceeds going to First Nations Development Institute

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Collection-of-Microphones-Mount-Eerie-Vinyl-and-Ephemera-FUNDRAISER-/303611851564?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49292

https://www.firstnations.org/

Ah man, cool selection. I swear there was another thread bumped recently for the upcoming album - might be under Phil Elvrum or his Microphones moniker.

haha, i own kind of am embarrassing amount of stuff in that auction. but some really rare stuff too, like the test pressings!

:o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7BkabF31ak&feature=youtu.be&t=01

the microphones - microphones in 2020 (2020)

heads up, phil is guesting on my mate's nts show this week reading some poetry and doing some new songs acapella. airing tuesday night/wednesday morning depending where you are:

https://www.nts.live/shows/plastic-language/episodes/plastic-language-12th-july-2023

https://www.lowprofilepodcast.com/season-7/72-phil-elverum-and-matt-fenton

Check out this podcast episode if you, like me, picked up "On Earth" by Peace from Phil's merch table and wondered what in the hell you were listening to. A 17 minute album I could never finish. I didn't know if it was a joke or some toss-off made with friends in an afternoon. No. Apparently Phil thought for a minute he'd release other people's music and wasted a lot of money recording them in Florida. And a bunch of other details that probably aren't true. Fun listen.

clear moon sounded absolutely wonderful to me tonight in a way that it never has before. must be the clear moon outside

Still umming and ahhing about tickets to his Brisbane show. Saw him last in 2013 (ocean roar/clear moon era) and it was a wonderful show in an intimate venue and I just think that might be enough for me.

Gave The Microphones - Mt. Eerie another spin driving through the hinterland the other day and that first track is still a majestic effort.

i'm going. he's playing mostly new material live at the moment and it sounds great, all like "huge fire" from earlier this year so i'm looking forward to hearing it in person

& he's released his best two albums (now only and microphones in 2020) in the past 5 years so hopefully he'll at least do something from now only

That’s a good sales pitch. I’m going to see David Toop and Loren Connors the night before there (highly recommend, free/donation gig), maybe I’ll back to back it? Time to listen to his new material and see what he does

I kind of got off the bus after A Crow Looked At Me, seems like I have a lot to catch up on.

if you've ever been a fan of any of his music you've absolutely gotta hear microphones in 2020, it's his masterpiece. utterly transcendental

Just chucked it on, nice to return to that lovely stereo acoustic percussive thing he had going. A mellow version of one of my favourite gastr del sol numbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaDfGFW6MZo

Thanks for the rec ufo, just bought a ticket. Let me buy you a drink if you're up for it (y)

good show tonight, nice to meet H.P too

the new material (which made up most of the show) was great to hear and i'm looking forward to the album. i do hope "huge fire" will be on it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpyhHs32SpY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-2JL00JdwE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyYDdVxDJOg

new music at last! "i walk" is pretty great

double album Night Palace out november 1

Night Palace
Huge Fire
Breaths
Swallowed Alive
My Canopy
Broom of Wind
I Walk
(soft air)
Empty Paper Towel Roll
Wind & Fog
Wind & Fog pt. 2
Blurred World
I Heard Whales (I Think)
I Saw Another Bird
I Spoke With A Fish
Myths Come True
Non-Metaphorical Decolonization
November Rain
Co-Owner of Trees
Myths Come True pt. 2
& Sun
Writing Poems
the Gleam pt. 3
Stone Woman Gives Birth To A Child At Night
Demolition
I Need New Eyes

features most (all?) of the songs he was playing live last year & many many more

Ordered. I wish I'd been organised enough to see if anyone else in the UK wanted to purchase at the same time (the postage being so ridiculous).

and two days after he put up nice new tshirts, with my sizes sold out already, goddammit Phil!

can't wait for this. picking up the physical someday

two new book products as well. killing me

His newsletter with a long bio/intro for the album is a great read! Sounds like he's doing very well. Interesting remark that Lost Wisdom Part 2 was a failure (i mean i know it's about a failed relationship ..)

https://pwelverumandsun.substack.com/p/night-palace-by-mount-eerie

on topic, apparently the unfolding cover/poster is even larger than the one for No Flashlight

i don't think he's saying that lost wisdom part 2 was a failure, but that the relationship was. i definitely don't like it as much as the albums either side of it

it feels surprising that he's never made an album as long as the new one before, it really seems like a natural fit for his approach

"not yet fully understanding what had happened to me ... I made songs as a vote cast toward fearlessness and honesty and against the cautious heart-guarding that can keep so many of us from what’s actually ecstatically possible. (Lost Wisdom pt. 2) It didn’t work. I am embarrassed."

I could see how he might still regard this as a valiant effort but also be embarrassed by its content (still in love with person after divorce). The present tense "I am embarrassed" is unique in this little career recap, iirc.

i definitely don't like it as much as the albums either side of it

Same but now curious to revisit

Oh, I should have been patient - the LP/CD are for sale at Norman Records (and presumably other places).

https://www.pwelverumandsun.com/pages/international-stores

I know some Canadian shops that will have it, but they're not going to bother listing it until they have it in hand (if they do online at all). So thanks for the tip on Norman. UK to Canada is somehow not so bad these days (I do an occasional order from Juno, ever since Germany's rates got jacked up)... funny that Norman would've actually saved me a few bucks if I ordered there. But I just went direct and picked up some other stuff while I was at it.

"i walk" is pretty great

it really is. he def shows how to do a final act, damn

enjoyed broom of wind too. imma sucker for sinister w a groove

not bold, sry

x-posts.

I did much the same, maf you. Ordered two more CDs, which didn't change the postage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNJ46h1PS_g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N03tiy2s9MQ

first half sounds like yo la tengo!

nice. this album's gonna rule.

I forgot to say, when Sufjan's album Javelin I went back to A Crow Looked At Me and all of us who said at the time it was an album to listen to once and never again were otm.

good album, one of his better ones

not as transcendent as microphones in 2020 but what is?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl2SK8WaoKU

I love "Huge Fire" and - for reasons I can't quite fathom - like it more with the video.

loving this, the most 'free' record he's made since the name change.

the song titles alone are a feast. "Co-Owner of Trees". Oh and the song totally shreds too?

Haven't gotten much time yet... might as well wait for the record to arrive end of the week. The full ridiculous No Flashlight style poster experience.

The full ridiculous No Flashlight style poster experience.

― maf you one two (maffew12), Tuesday, November 5, 2024 12:41 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I have found myself wondering whether the poster was frameable??

with a 6x4 foot frame, sure

I have to confess that I looked on "Frames R Us" (have never used so can't endorse or otherwise) and a frame that size came up as £130-£190.

do it do it

It would be great, wouldn't it?

(build your own frame!)
(you 100% know that's what phil would want you to do)

(another move is to ask a friend/acquaintance who has a bunch of tools or diy skills to help you - as i grow older i'm learning to appreciate how some people show their love or support in different ways, and for a lot of people, they way they show it is to help you build shit, and they love to do it.)

(another option is to email phil and ask him to do it for you, he might lol)

I actually emailed my local (and brilliant) framers for a rough quote (ISIS Framing, Oxford) and they suggested that it'd be in the ball park of £350.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/11/phil-elverum-interview-microphones-mount-eerie-night-palace?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1731343365

Album is a little long but it has its moments

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mount-eerie-night-palace/

Pitchfork gives it a best album status

I missed the Hana Stretton album earlier this year (re-released by Elverum) and, I think, a subsequent UK tour.

Sounds really nice. Prohibitively expensive, given the postal costs, but suppose I could ordered digitally.

"could order"

got it with my order. it is a beaut. it's on streaming and whatnots

happily the Night Palace notes are folded for reading in the style of a comically large newspaper, browsable by record side.

the No Flashlight notes are handwritten chaos. Tempted to frame it.

Yeah, if I'd noticed it I would have ordered with "Night Palace".

Have never shopped at World of Echo (in the UK) but fair play to them - Googling suggests they did have stock at some point.

New Mount Eerie album and book (and some back catalogue) on its way, apparently. I confess to being quite excited.

I've only played on Spotify so far but it seems great. Maybe too sprawling and covering a lot of ground to be perfect but easily one of my favourites of this year. I don't even get uppity about the one where he chats with a fish.

Would anyone in Oxford (or thereabouts) or the UK want a Hana Stretton album?

I'm trying to work out the optimum number to buy to get the best from the US postal system ...

(Oxford, as I could hand deliver ... which might be off-putting, I suppose ... or get you to come to my place of work).

Strange. Was talking about Mount Eerie with a friend at the weekend and he was convinced that Phil would only play one UK date (London) if he toured this album. I'd have thought loads of people would want to hear Night Palace, live.

Amusingly, my order from America arrived from ... Slough.

Easily my favourite album of the year. It's sprawling and there are sometimes tracks I want to skip but it covers so much ground. Enjoying it *differently* as two CDs rather than a Spotify playlist.