A Crow Looked At Me
by Mount Eerie

From Mattdup279 04/05/2017 17:01 | #188740 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I feel perverse for even listening to this album. It is so deeply personal and heartbreaking that it feels strange to just put in my headphones and listen to it like it is any other album.

I believe this to be a great album, but I am having a hard time determining just how great given how difficult it is to actually listen to. I love plenty of honest and painful albums (Carrie & Lowell, Hi How Are You), but this one is something especially harrowing. Plus, even though the lyrics are so powerful, the songs themselves are rather simple and all sound very close to each other. While this does work as an effective vessel for the lyrics, I do see the argument that this is more great poetry than great music.

At the moment, I really don't know where to rank this is my overall chart. Is it top 20? Should it even be in the top 100 at all? I have never struggled to rank an album this much.

From Komorebi-D 03/26/2017 02:44 | #188097 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I - like many people - have followed through from Elverum's early days in The Microphones, the albums released under this monkier and it's undeniably said that his is most personal document. So much so that it makes any comparisons to it and reviews of it redundant. I suppose my only motivation for continuing is fueled by a desire to share my thoughts. Like I mentioned before, trying to draw connections to it and albums like Benji, Carrie & Lowell or Skeleton Tree are pointless. This due to one singular fact; this is "barely music". What it actually is Elverum unmasking his calamitous thoughts while being backed by electronic drums, guitars, bass and the occasional piano. "Death is Real" are the first three words to greet you and serve has the harrowing mission statement of what's to come. Other lines, like "I now wield the power to transform a grocery store aisle/ into a canyon of pity and confusion/ And mutual aching to leave" on My Chasm or "Today our daughter asked me if mama swims/ I told her, "Yes, she does/ And that's probably all she does now" on Swims may be dramatized but they convey very surreal but domesticated views on death and grief, you can feel Elverum's inability to contain the way he feels even though he knows he has to. I only have one flaw with this as an album and it's minor; at times the songs tend seem like they overlap one another because of incredibly similar instrumentation. I can definitely see this being one people will remember when it comes to formulating an end of year list and I will surely be among them. Not that this or any of it matters when talking about this album, just experience it for yourself.

This album is extremely personal and painful. Phil Elverum describes in detail his wife succumbing to cancer, and the effect her death has on his mental state. An important theme that is expressed throughout the album is that death should not be romanticized as it often is in music and art. He instead portrays her death in all its realness and ugliness, including her jaundiced face and "bloody, end of life tissues," so that listeners can better understand the intense suffering she endured at the end of her life. Elverum explores the theme of devastation following loss in a unique and powerful way, describing how he has become "untethered," wondering if life has any meaning whatsoever. He wonders if her spirit is still present virtually everywhere he goes, showing that the death of a loved one can haunt us for long after it occurs. Every song is sung to Elverum's wife (she is the "you" in the songs), except for the last track. This track is directed at their daughter, which I interpret as Elverum's way of saying that his wife's spirit lives on in the little girl. The lyrics of the album are so personally, authentically, and emotionally written that we can feel Elverum's pain as we listen to the album. Every single song includes an overwhelming amount of emotion that helps to express the reality of death. Overall, this album is beautifully written with somber instrumentation and descriptive lyrics. This album is not an easy listen due to the emotions it evokes, but I consider it a very important album to listen to because of the realistic way death and devastation are portrayed. This is definitely one of the best albums of 2017 so far.

9/10

Death isn't always bad, but when it happens in the way that occured to Geneviève Castrée Elverum, it's devastating. Phil paints an extremely bleak, but ultimately intense love story of his late wife and its influence on him and his future. We all know "death is real", but some death is much more brutal than others. I suppose people may rate this album lowly for the sole reason of it being too painful and personal to find any value in revisiting it or "enjoying". An album like this isn't one you enjoy, but to just listen. Listen and be empathetic. If it's okay for films, especially documentaries, to being up close and personal about uncomfortable topics, then why can't we have an album like this? But more than anything, the music is genuinely good. Very good, in fact. Anyone can spill their heart out, but it takes someone gifted to turn their heart into engaging music. In the end, it's clear that not only did Geneviève die, but a part of Phil did too. Gone, forever, is a mother and half of a man.

As Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum has been trafficking in musical depression porn for years. Now with the passing of his wife, he can up the ante to death porn. Listen, I don't begrudge Elverum his grief. Losing someone so close to you is devastating. So if he got some personal therapeutic benefit by singing and playing these "songs" in private, that's fine. But if he wasn't willing to develop these amateurish ideas into actual music, he should have kept the shit to himself. To release this tuneless, tedious, and lyrically lazy garbage for public consumption is inexcusable. And the fact that he thought it a good idea to do so makes me question if his grief is truly sincere at all, or just a cynical ploy for sympathy praise from those of us so desperate for musical authenticity and "real" emotion that it's lowered our standards and made us gullible to pseudo-authentic poseurs.

If he really gave a damn about his wife's passing, why couldn't he bother writing any melodies for her? If he really gave a damn about his wife's memory, why couldn't he bother writing actual lyrics for her, instead of the artless and inept "stream-of-consciousness" blathering any talentless hack could have come up with? If anything, this half-assed embarrassment of an album is a mockery to his wife's memory. She couldn't have been very important to him if he thinks he can get away with such a piss-poor release. And sadly for the artform, he has gotten away with it. As the mountain of lavish & near-universal praise the album's received will attest.

But what kind of self-loathing masochist would ever want to listen to this thing twice? I trudged through it once, and by comparison, all that plastic manufactured pop music we love to rail against is sounding pretty damn good to me. And are they really any less authentic? Bruno Mars and Katy Perry are paragons of emotional depth and sincerity compared to the kind of low-life who would cynically and lazily exploit his wife's memory for cheap and easy sympathy plaudits.