Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked at Me

Mount Eerie
A Crow Looked at Me
2017
Spotify

A Crow Looked at Me begins with the line "Death is real, Someone's there and then their not". The song is called "Real Death" and recounts the tale of how Phil Elverum recently lost his wife, and the mother of his child to cancer. Death is no stranger to music, and art in general, but on this album Elverum lays it all out plainly, death fucking sucks. The entire album is entirely focused on memories surrounding his wife's death. It is a stripped down album, mostly just acoustic guitar and vocals, with some very well done garage type production. Every song sort of works with the other to create this narrative, memories of the good times as well as the mundane. "Ravens" sets this forest scene, a walk Elverum took with his wife for the last time to fully embrace her death. The album is so heartfelt, so raw and so damn honest but holy shit is it a bummer. There is no release from the grief, just a constant barrage of those things we think in our heads after someone dies, but don't have the balls to share with the rest of the world. Elverum is taking such a huge risk with this album, because it really is not something you are supposed to share. He recognizes that, but the pull to deal with her death in the only way He knows how is just too great. You are witness to a love that seemed so real that the only thing that could actually tear it apart was death. There are times the album is so sad that you can't help but laugh at the sheer humanity of it all.

"My Chasm" is perhaps the saddest of the sad and the beat is punctuated with what sounds like a breathing machine that suddenly ends and Elverum reiterates "death is real.". The breathing machine continues on "When I Take out the Garbage at Night" as his wife slowly slips away. The mundane task of taking out the garbage becomes so wrought with sadness, "Emptiness, Pt. 2" is pure desperation, trying to stumble through the night and find meaning in all this sadness but finding none. Elverum makes a point to say that in the past He would write about sadness or death in an abstract way, but since facing it in capital R reality his sentiments have changed and become more grounded in a real thing. Even though death is the central theme, Elverum infuses so much of the world that is still alive. The grass still grows, the forest will continue forever and life simply goes on. It is not uplifting in that seeing life has quelled his sadness but rather seeing life is the reason to go on, to keep pushing forward. I would love to recommend this album to friends, share with them it's beauty and it's realness but it is such a slog through such depressing sentiments that it would be hard to ask someone to go through that. If they do however they will find something beautiful and sad all at once. Death is real, it most certainly is.

8.1 out of 10