Mount Eerie-Now Only Review
Phil Elverum, ex-frontman of one of the most kaleidoscopic bands of the early 2000s, The Microphones and proprietor of the Mount Eerie title, is redefining the expression of grief in music.
His 2017 album, A Crow Looked At Me grappled with the immediate aftermath of the death of his longtime spouse Geneviève Castrée, conveying the cavernous void which burrows into the human psyche after losing a loved one. Crow was sparsely orchestrated, filled with plucky, lingering guitar-work and intimate vocals which merged Elverum’s conscious into the listener’s own.
Now Only can be considered a companion piece to it’s predecessor, expanding the intimate and difficult topics discussed on Crow into a broader blanket covering contemporary society, as well as adding garage-like and voracious production backing tracks like “Distortion” and “Earth”. This contrast can immediately be seen weighing the covers of both albums, with the 2017 release focusing on a copy of the minimal poem “Night Palace” by Joanne Kyger, who had passed away mere weeks before the release of the album. Now Only is a much more vibrant collection of images, all with some semblance of connection to Elverum (including a photo of Kyger, a group picture of The Microphones, images of wildlife from the Pacific Northwest (near Phil’s hometown in Washington), and a clipping from a Hergé cartoon).
The standout track of Only is the title, incorporating a longing yet carefree hook reminiscent of Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” that quickly descends into Elverum’s common stream-of-consciousness delivery interspersed throughout the album. Hopping between recollections of the endless wait inside a hospital lobby or an internal crisis at a recent music festival in Phoenix, “Now Only” continually returns to the album’s crushingly depressing theme after each sonic diversion. “Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup” discusses Eleverum’s admiration for the aforementioned Norwegian painter, namely his works “Midsummer Eve Bonfire” and “Foxgloves”. Despite each of Astrup’s works utilizing colorful oil techniques for a tapestry-esque deception of early 20th century life in Scandinavia, Elverum sees both as cryptic and omniscient( “Now I don’t wonder anymore, If it’s significant that all these foxgloves spring up”/”On the place where I’m about to build our house, And go to live in, let you fade in the night air”).
“Crow, Pt. 2”, the final track on the album and the only directly related to the album’s companion piece, elaborates on the first part’s complex connection between Geneviève’s passing and the natural order circling outside Elverum’s house (“Sweet kid, what is this world we’re giving you?/Smoldering and fascist with no mother/Are you dreaming about a crow?”). He mentions his and his late wife’s daughter on both tracks, her innocence towards the concept of death providing a necessary counterbalance to his emotional burden (both of them interpreting a crow in the forest in different facets, the child in wonder at the creature’s majesty and Phil seeing the bird as a watchful reincarnation”). When the daughter asks to hear “mama’s record” on “Pt. 2” however, the dissonance in understanding between both parties is shattered, with each listening to Geneviève’ singing as a pure encapsulation of her life.
Now Only is just as difficult and overly relatable to listen to as A Crow Looked At Me, yet conveys loss in an entirely different manner. Both records share a central focus on grief over loved ones, lost artists, and the passage of time, but while Crow wallows in the immediate aftermath of these ideas, Only has a shimmer of optimism waiting just underneath; the musical representation of the“end of the tunnel” awaiting the final months of the healing process undertaken by those engulfed in personal tragedy.
