Now Only
by Mount Eerie

Phil created another masterpiece. Yes, the instrumentation is sparse but it purposefully symbolizes the remains of his life and gives room for his words to breath. He crafted his words to speak not only to the listener but to each other and other songs such as Tintin in Tibet and Distortion. Rarely has a record touched me in such a way as Now Only. A perfect album.

From thirstyDog 04/04/2019 03:39 | #234479

Mount Eerie: A Crow Looked At Me
Critics: "What a beautiful and devastating record"
Mount Eerie: Now Only
Critics: "Okay Phil, enough about the dead wife."

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From slurpdurp 06/06/2018 18:33 | #216246

Phil Elverum builds off of the emotion of 2017's "A Crow Looked at Me" but adds more of a band. His reflections are very personal but do carry some meaning to a wider audience. His stories are devastatingly intense as expected, but some of them just aren't so interesting to listen to for as long as he tells them for. However, I know that this is an album that was not really intended to be listened to as much as it was needed to be produced. I hope that Phil is healing and will one day receive the closure he needs to heal.

The lyrics are beautiful but for me personally, this whole monotonous shtick that the like of Mount Eerie, Father John Misty and Sun Kil Moon employ is beginning to become tedious.

Fav Track: Distortion

Good.

B

Another great album from the Mount Eerie moniker. While A Crow Looked at Me dealt with the immense grief in the immediate throws of coping with death, Now Only deals with something touched on far less frequently - attempting to live a normal existence a long while after the death of somebody you love. It does so incredibly tastefully and with a great deal of poetic rawness.

From JulianR 03/23/2018 20:43 | #211585

To review this independent of its relationship to ACLAM seems ignorant at best; it must be compared. A Crow Looked At Me was able to be as powerful as it was becuase the musical aspect was so soft spoken that it drew all attention to the extraordinarily sincere and heartbreaking lyricism. Now Only has shifted back toward Phil's more usual style, and I feel personally that both the lyricism and music have suffered to some degree. It feels more scripted now, with the lyrics and music seeming less spontaneous, and by extension less heartfelt. The subject matter is of course a little less raw, and that is understandable, as Phil is going through the process of healing. It deals a lot more with history and the present, as opposed to a focus on the time directly before, during, and after his wife's death. So of course it will be more distant, less personal. But I still feel that it could have read a little less like a collection of loosely related experiences, and more like a cohesive story, though I do think that he is still able to say important and profound things (as always, of course). And the musical backing, now more in the forefront, was not particularly compelling, except on the track Earth.

In total, I think that I'm glad he didn't make another ACLAM. For one, I don't think the feat could have been repeated without sounding formulaic or just as sincere. But additionally, even if he had been able to, I don't think he could avoid diluting the power of what he created with ACLAM, which is a singular work of art, a piece that was able to capture and convey in a way that no one else has gotten even close to achieving.

75/100

From Antonio-Pedro 03/18/2018 16:58 | #211197

While A crow looked at me felt really intimate, like phil was singing from his raw emotions close from a fireplace on a cold night, Now only portrays phil's different spectrum of feelings with such a diverse instrumentation in contrast to the guitar and (808 I guess) which was there to be his only partner in that heartbreaking moment. Differently from ACLAM, I feel like this is a more elaborated and nostalgic record, they both are lovely in their own emotional kaleidoscope. Bless You Phil.

From lleon79 03/17/2018 22:40 | #211147

The last two songs are pretty good. I can't get behind the rest of the album though. As with last year's album, it's very depressing, but Now Only is way more approachable.