Mount Eerie Announces New Album, Shares New Song “Real Death”: Listen

Phil Elverum has announced a new Mount Eerie album. A Crow Looked at Me , the follow-up to 2015’s Sauna, is out March 24 on his label P.W. Elverum & Sun. The songs on the record are a reaction to the death of his wife, artist Geneviève Castrée, who passed away from pancreatic cancer last summer. According to a press release, Elverum wrote and recorded A Crow Looked at Me last fall in the same room where she died, using mostly her instruments. Listen to the album’s opening track “Real Death,” below, and find the album art and tracklist. (Another album track, “Crows,” was released last week on an ACLU benefit compilation.)

Elverum has shared a statement about making the album:

Why share this much? Why open up like this? Why tell you, stranger, about these personal moments, the devastation and the hanging love? Our little family bubble was so sacred for so long. We carefully held it behind a curtain of privacy when we’ d go out and do our art and music selves, too special to share, especially in our hyper-shared imbalanced times. Then we had a baby and this barrier felt even more important. (I still don’ t want to tell you our daughter’ s name.) In May 2015 they told us Geneviève had a surprise bad cancer, advanced pancreatic, and the ground opened up. ‘ What matters now?’ we thought. Then on July 9th 2016 she died at home and I belonged to nobody anymore. My internal moments felt like public property. The idea that I could have a self or personal preferences or songs eroded down into an absurd old idea leftover from a more self-indulgent time before I was a hospital-driver, a caregiver, a child-raiser, a griever. I am open now, and these songs poured out quickly in the fall, watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house. I make these songs and put them out into the world just to multiply my voice saying that I love her. I want it known.

DEATH IS REAL could be the name of this album. These cold mechanics of sickness and loss are real and inescapable, and can bring an alienating, detached sharpness. But it is not the thing I want to remember. A crow did look at me. There is an echo of Geneviève that still rings, a reminder of the love and infinity beneath all of this obliteration. That’ s why.

According to a press release, Elverum’s writing on the album was inspired by Karl Ove Knausgård, Julie Doiron, Gary Snyder, Sun Kil Moon, and Joanne Kyger (whose poem “Night Palace” is used in the cover art).

A Crow Looked at Me:

Watch Mount Eerie’s “The Place Lives” music video, via Pitchfork.tv:

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