New Music From Mount Eerie
Over the past couple of decades, Phil Elverum – who initially released music as The Microphones before transitioning to the Mount Eerie moniker – has developed a cult-like following amongst listeners for his sonic adventurousness, prolific creation, wry lyricism, and relentlessly DIY ethos. Yet his last few years have been a whirlwind of change. A few years ago, he was welcoming a child into the hermetic Anacortes, Washington home he shared with his wife Geneviève Castrée. Her cancer diagnosis and subsequent death ushered in a new period of Elverum, who responded with the most unflinchingly candid albums of his career: A Crow Looked At Me and Now Only. Those heart-wrenching LPs were received not only by Elverum’s fans but by the world at large, leading to critical accolades and a weird level of mainstream attention that was magnified when it was revealed that “love returned” and he’d met and secretly married actress Michelle Williams. “With this love,” he writes, “came a new understanding of the weird balances between real life and art projects, between home and exposure. I moved into a new world and happily angled the work inward, keeping more quiet.”
“But nothing stops changing,” he continues. “It didn’t work out and I had to move again.” After the dissolution of his relationship with Williams, a new set of songs came out. Elverum writes, “I hoped to write songs about the smoldering foundation beneath all of this surface chaos, a love that doesn’t die, songs beyond mere sorrow… I tried to make songs that did not rely at all on who I am or who I am singing about… even while singing inescapably as and about myself.” In a grab for deeper continuity, he asked Eric’s Trip singer Julie Doiron – who has been an influence on Elverum since he first saw her perform in 1993 – to join him in what would become a sequel to the pair’s 2008 LP Lost Wisdom, appropriately titled Lost Wisdom pt. 2. “Belief pt. 2” follows “Love Without Possession” as the album’s second advance single. Elverum explains, “Julie and I recorded this song at night with the doors and windows all the way open, hoping to get the nighthawks and night air onto the recording. The other songs were recorded during the day, but this song is a night song. We tried to make our version of sacred music, under stars in the high dark cool air.”
“Best New Track (“Love Without Possession”). A calm, clear-eyed meditation on love as a word, a mythology, and a natural event with the power to devastate and heal… Together, they tell a story that’s less narrative-based than the last two Mount Eerie albums but just as personal and profound.” -Pitchfork
“Julie Doiron entangles her voice with Elverum’s still-beating heart. This a different kind of love song, one that asks what happens after love or, maybe, how the elastic meaning of love both changes and stays the same.” -NPR
RIYL: Sun Kil Moon, Will Oldham / Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Mirah, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Scout Niblett, Little Wings
FCC Clean
Label: P.W. Elverum & Sun
Digital Servicing Only
Full Album Available November 8
