A Crow Looked at Me
ORDER A PHYSICAL COPY HERE: www.pwelverumandsun.com P.W. ELVERUM & SUN box 1561 Anacortes, Wash. U.S.A. 98221 WRITTEN AND RECORDED August 31st to Dec. 6th, 2016 in the same room where Geneviève died, using mostly her instruments, her guitar, her bass, her pick, her amp, her old family accordion, writing the words on her paper, looking out the same window. 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.) Then 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. - Phil Elverum Dec. 11th, 2016 Anacortes
Phil Elverum lost his wife—an artist and the mother of his child—to cancer. His new album is a meditation on her memory, but also on what it means to keep living.
Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn is a deeply empathetic songwriter. That’s not always obvious, since his characters tend to be working through (self-imposed) streaks of bad luck or turbulent emotional spirals. However, even his protagonists with shifting moral compasses tend to be likable, mainly because Finn is adept…
Paste Magazine is your source for the best music, movies, TV, comedy, videogames, books, comics, craft beer, politics and more. Discover your favorite albums and films.
Phil Elverum is so skilled at expressing spirituality and mortality in his work as Mount Eerie that it's convenient to say he's unusually equipped to transform the loss of his wife, musician/writer/visual artist Geneviève Castrée, into something profound and beautiful.
When acclaimed French-Canadian cartoonist Geneviève Castrée died of pancreatic cancer last July, it only made sense that her husband, Phil E...
A Crow Looked at Me is an unflinching look at life going on after the loss of someone dear, as much about love as it is about death.