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.

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.