Clear Moon - Mount Eerie

Clear Moon

Mount Eerie

P.W. Elverum & Sun Ltd.

SCQ Rating: 75%

At a glimpse, Phil Elverum’s muse, particularly under his Mount Eerie guise, seems largely focused on one mountainous patch of the Pacific Northwest. Yet surprisingly, like an aging love letter to Anacortes, Washington, the last decade of Elverum’s career has adventured a series of artistic maneuvers that only the casual fan could consider genre-exercises. However distinctly the metal leanings of Wind’s Poem might grate against Lost Wisdom’s pared down folk, they all speak a language of isolation and lay out a treacherous sonic geography. This year’s Clear Moon not only relieves any fears brought on by 2010’s patchy odds-and-sods opus Song Islands Vol 2, it represents a triumph in his perpetual search for identity and home.

Featuring methodical acoustic strumming and deeply sparse percussion, “Through the Trees Pt 2” finds the Mount Eerie trademarks neatly aligned but pitted in a tonal overcast of dull synth-layers rumbling in the background. Narrative-wise, one might imagine Clear Moon unfolding similarly to 2003's Mount Eerie’s tale of a boy journeying toward the peak of his hometown; similarly, “Through the Trees Pt 2” carries a complacent calm that only hints at the desperate times laying in wait. Darkly psychedelic dirges like “The Place Lives” and the terrifying title track sit just past the horizon but the trip is tempered by compositions that keep Elverum an unpredictable songwriter. The rhythmic menacing of “House Shape” keeps the momentum fresh while the bombastic horn presence on “Lone Bell” shimmers with iridescent hope.

A wide-eyed look at the terrifying, looming and beautiful, Clear Moon showcases Phil Elverum’s vehicle in yet another atmospheric setting. It reads as bleak – and, make no mistake, it is – but there’s also something in the way Elverum arranges his darkness that latches onto listeners in a fun way. Those who take comfort in completely inhospitable records will roundly rejoice.

Song Islands Vol. 2 - Mount Eerie

Song Islands Vol. 2

Mount Eerie
Phil Elverum and Sun, Ltd.

SCQ Rating: 64%

“Seriously?” Yep, that’s how I first responded to the very existence of Song Islands Vol. 2. Don’t get me wrong: Phil Elverum’s discography displays, if nothing else, how ‘prolific’ should be done, by assembling projects borne of personal heritage (Mount Eerie’s childhood fantasy) or social circumstance (Lost Wisdom's communal sessions with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire) and churning out sudden explorations into vastly new sonic terrains (Wind Poem’s metal affinity). And my disbelief over Song Islands Vol. 2’s premise doesn’t even rest at the seeming impossibility of gathering spare parts from those wildly different releases and cramming them together... although, let’s face it, that’s a concern. My disbelief instead stems from Elverum’s chosen tracklisting, which features an ungodly thirty-one songs all courtesy of someone who has already put out seven releases since 2008.

And then ‘Where?’ begins, a half-finished song full of Elverum’s familiar tape-hiss and multi-tracked murmurings, and I’ve already forgiven him. Despite Mount Eerie’s tireless parade of EPs, LPs, CD-books and 12”s over the past half-decade, the magic that first instilled early Microphones work with his personal, lo-fi oddness still sounds fresh today. Even amid the India-indebted ‘The Intimacy’ which overlays eastern rhythms with a beautiful collage of harmonics, the first, er, one-sixth of Song Islands speaks like an average (meaning peculiar) Mount Eerie release. Maintaining any sort of LP arch goes out the window with the trash-thrash of ‘instrumental’ and the isolated vocal-tracks from Lost Wisdom’s ‘Voice In Headphones’ and, although each of these leftovers offer a glimpse into moments of Mount Eerie’s back-catalog, there’s enough quality material here to warrant a thematically tighter collection of fifteen key tracks. The improvised strums of ‘Cold Mountain’s Song #286’ evoke Elverum’s rustic sensibilities so well, it could’ve tied swimmingly into ‘Grave Robbers’ or stretched into the more adventurous ‘Calf In Pasture’.

Yes, it’s difficult to resist the urge to re-sequence and, in a way, validate these many highlights from Elverum’s intended hodgepodge. Playing out like a restless retread of ideas that hovered above, if never settling upon, Mount Eerie’s previous entries, these seventy-odd minutes deliver the intermittent case of déjà vu here and there. Elverum’s aura may swerve this raw bulk of recordings from feeling like a gutter-scraping cash-grap but Song Islands Vol. 2 would’ve been far more approachable had Elverum not treated it like a waste-bin for everything lying around.

Lost Wisdom - Mount Eerie (SCQ Detox 1 of 2)

Lost Wisdom

Mount Eerie
P.W. Elverum & Sun Records.

SCQ Rating: 63%

Phil Elverum’s songwriting has always maintained a faint grip on early 70s folk ideology, where the hippie-metaphors and flower-power muses were left for dead and instead replaced with introspective bouts of clarity. Much of Elverum’s best work (the Microphones’ The Glow Part 2 or the Mount Eerie EP) dealt closely with his childhood but was smartly universalized by making himself a character in a work of imaginative fiction. Five years later, Lost Wisdom retains the skeleton of his cherished fables but finds Elverum closer to ever to that early 70s introspection. Dark, brooding guitars meander over the weak hiss of these ten home-recordings that find Mount Eerie better prepped for vinyl than ever before. Julie Doiron and Fred Squires guest.

Entirely acoustic and performed by guitar and voice alone, Lost Wisdom continually flirts with monotony over its quaint twenty-three minute running-time. Songs like ‘Voice in Headphones’ and ‘You Swan, Go On’ are needed respites from Elverum’s self-seriousness, but too few tracks here deviate the isolated tone pushed by ‘If We Knew’ or ‘Grave Robbers’. As brief as Lost Wisdom is, I’m still left a bit stir-crazy from being inside Elverum’s lo-fi mind for so long. If only he closed the disc with a righteous track of confident rebuttal to all his unrequited longings that, like the front image of a cabin burning to the ground, would’ve rendered his claustrophobic introspection worth undertaking.

7) MOUNT EERIE - The Microphones (Top Extended Plays)

MOUNT EERIE

The Microphones
K Records

SCQ Rating: 80%

Where to begin with the unforgettable Mount Eerie? First off, it’s long enough to be a full-length despite its five tracks, the EP name alone would inspire Phil Elvrum to replace The Microphones as his moniker, and best of all, it’s a concept album about a boy who travels to conquer the mysterious mountain of his hometown, dies, and travels the solar system. If you think I’ve spoiled the plot, unbelievably, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

With various K Record colleagues playing the roles of several reoccurring characters, Mount Eerie feels more like a full-blown production than an afterthought EP. Hauntingly original and challenging, this is a rite of passage for both protagonist and listener.