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a considered opinion: mount eerie - wind’s poem
If Wind’s Poem is anything to go by, Phil Elverum is a sponge. A goddamn musicalsponge. The creative force behind Mount Eerie, Elverum has claimed that he has, of late, been heavily influenced by black metal acts such as Xasthur. The onslaught of opening track “Wind’s Dark Poem” supports this claim instantly with its dense squall of pummeling guitars bathed in layers of distortion. Although the first few bars sound alarmingly like they were written by some funeral makeup-wearing gentlemen from the icy expanses of Scandinavia, once Elverum’s voice creeps in it becomes clear that that’s not quite the case. Rather than an incomprehensible guttural roar, Elverum sings with a slight, vulnerable voice that sounds as though, regardless of the fact that it is surrounded by thunderous guitars and crashing drums, it could be knocked over by a gentle breeze. His voice is one of the few constants throughout the album, never deviating from the quiet, humble tone established in the opening track. This lack of change never feels tedious, however, since everything around Elverum’s voice is constantly in flux, shifting moods, tones and genres between songs (and sometimes within them). Although he cites black metal as a primary influence, it’s clear that Elverum draws from whatever genres he sees fit. Although the dense, crashing sounds of “Wind’s Dark Poem” pop up throughout the album on tracks like “The Hidden Stone” and “The Mouth of Sky”, he frequently veers wildly away. At times, he sounds like The Flaming Lips, in the delayed piano and reverberated guitars of “Ancient Questions”, and at other times he sounds like Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits, with the chicken-scratch guitars and vibraphones of “Between Two Mysteries”, possibly the album’s best song.
Elverum has described the sound of his latest release as “black wooden”, which seems to encapsulate both the direct influence that black metal has had on his own sound and the tone of his work in general: he writes dark, haunting songs that rely on (at times excessively) heavy evocation of natural imagery. Wind’s Poem frequently reminded me of Grouper’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. If Liz Harris were a) male and b) willing to explore the furthest extremes of both the delicate and harsh aspects of her music, then her next album might sound a whole hell of a lot like Wind’s Poem. It is Elverum’s willingness to explore and stretch his sound in different directions, however, that often births the album’s weakest points. All of the heavier songs on the album sound infuriatingly similar, relying on the same wall of noise guitars and endless cymbal crashing, and the left-field sonic experiments of “(something)” are self-indulgent, meandering, and worst of all, pointless. Although it may be inconsistent in terms of quality, Wind’s Poem does manage to evoke a continuous sense of melancholy and expansiveness: the whole album feels like a soundtrack to sitting on a mountainside at dawn and feeling gloomy. While it is most certainly a complete downer (oh GOD would I love to see someone put this album on at a party), it is so thoroughly evocative and persistent in its emotional themes that it’s almost a pleasure to sit back and let the gloom and doom set in.
Some American RECOMMENDS Mount Eerie’s Wind’s Poem
