Now Only
Phil Elverum’s 2017 album as Mount Eerie (*A Crow Looked at Me*) broke new ground for confessionalism, detailing the sickness and death of his wife, Geneviève, with a directness and specificity that felt at once heartbreaking and borderline artless—the chaos of real life, arranged in simple folk song. *Now Only* dips further into Elverum’s stream of consciousness, reflecting on everything from Jack Kerouac and the weight of paternity (“Distortion”) to an evening on Skrillex’s tour bus (“Now Only”) and the triangulation of grief through art (“Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup”).
WRITTEN AND RECORDED between March 14th and October 9th, 2017 at home in the same room ORDER A PHYSICAL COPY HERE: www.pwelverumandsun.com P.W. ELVERUM & SUN box 1561 Anacortes, Wash. U.S.A. 98221 PRESS RELEASE: Now Only, written shortly following the release of A Crow Looked At Me and the first live performances of those songs, is a deeper exploration of that style of candid, undisguised lyrical writing. It portrays Elverum’s continuing immersion in the strange reality of Geneviève’s death, chronicling the evolution of his relationship to her and her memory, and of the effect the artistic exploration of his grief has had on his own life. The scope of Now Only encompasses not only hospitals and deathbeds, but also a music festival, childhood memories of conversations with Elverum’s mother, profound paintings and affecting artworks he encounters, a documentary about Jack Kerouac, and most significantly, memories of his life with Geneviève. These moments and thoughts resonate with each other, creating a more complex and nuanced picture of mourning and healing. The power of these songs comes not from the small, sharp moments of cutting phrases or shocks, but the echoes that weave the songs together, the way a life is woven. The music, fully realized by Elverum alone at home, is fleshed out texturally and seems to react to the words in real time. In a moment of confusion, dissonance abruptly makes itself known; in a moment of clarity, gentle piano arises. On the title track, the blunt declaration of “people get cancer and die” is subverted by a melody that can only be described as pop. As Elverum reinvents his lyrical process, he is also refining his musical vocabulary. Elverum’s life during the period he wrote Now Only was defined by the duality of existing with the praise and attention garnered by A Crow Looked At Me and the difficult reality of maintaining a house with a small child by himself, as well as working to preserve Geneviève’s artistic legacy. Consumed with the day to day of raising his daughter, Elverum felt his musical self was so distant that it seemed fictional. Stepping into the role of Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie held the promise of positive empathy and praise, but also the difficulty of inhabiting the intense grief that produced the music. These moments, both public and domestic, are chronicled in these songs. They are songs of remembrance, and songs about the idea of remembrance, about living on the cusp of the past and present and reluctantly witnessing a beloved person’s history take shape. Time continues.
The expansive companion album to last year’s A Crow Looked At Me is no less a marvel. Phil Elverum’s latest is part memoir and part magnum opus, sung softly and with wonder.
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Our writers take a look at this week's releases, from the wide-eyed country pop of Kacey Musgraves on 'Golden Hour' to the bare, anti-folk stylings of Mount Eerie on 'Now Only'
On A Crow Looked at Me, Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum masterfully described how the death of his wife, Geneviève Castrée, changed him.
Mount Eerie's harrowing 2017 album, A Crow Looked at Me, was written in the aftermath of the death of songwriter Phil Elverum's wife Geneviè...
Under his Mount Eerie guise, Phil Elverum released one of the most powerful albums of recent times, A Crow Looked at Me, laying bare unmanageable grief following the loss of his wife Geneviève to cancer.
Mount Eerie's ‘A Crow Looked at Me’ was not an album that seemingly begged for a sequel, but the follow-up 'Now Only' is (again) extraordinary.
Mount Eerie's 2017 album, A Crow Looked at Me seemed to be the culmination of Phil Elverum's longtime preoccupations with shapes and void, with nature and...
'Now Only' by Mount Eerie: Mount Eerie gets personal but not accessible in our review of 'Now Only'
Phil Elverum’s last album focused unsparingly on his wife’s death, and a year later, the loss is still paralysing, though leavened with tiny moments of hope