Mount Eerie : Wind’s Poem
Phil Elverum has built a career on intimate, lo-fi indie folk and enormous, explosive blasts of mega-distorted fuzz rock. Sometimes these elements are all wrapped up in one album, such as on his 2001 masterpiece, The Microphones’ The Glow Pt. 2. Sometimes he maintains the discipline of one color palette, as on last year’s darkly beautiful Lost Wisdom. But his work often requires either the intensely private space of one’s own headphones, or a speaker system with volume capabilities beastly enough to blast into a valley and across a mountainside. Mount Eerie‘s newest album, Wind’s Poem, is most frequently a case of the latter.
Elverum has said that one of the biggest inspirations for Wind’s Poem is the work of U.S. black metal artists such as Xasthur, so it should come as no surprise that the album is, in various parts, one of his loudest. It’s not a pure black metal album so much as an epic permutation of his mystical folk that incorporates various elements of haunting, cinematic and supernatural metal. The closest that Elverum & Co. come to the blistering, cavernous roar of Xasthur or Wolves in the Throne Room is on the opening track, “Wind’s Dark Poem,” a furious rush of distortion and sweeping, majestic riffs that sounds not so much like a poem as it does an extended clap of thunder. It’s big, and it’s mighty, and at times emits high-pitched shrieks that are somewhat frightening. Suffice to say, it’s awesome.
Wind’s Poem is not exclusively composed of thunderous metal-inspired songs, and the balance between its quieter moments and its louder ones finds it in slight kinship with The Glow Pt. 2. Yet this album contains few catchy, two-minute indie pop songs and more dirges, ambience and noise experiments. It’s even pretty accessible at times. The ]other most dramatic track here, the 11-minute “Through The Trees,” comes right after the first one, offsetting the opener’s gut-wrenching waves of distortion with woozy organs and a serene kind of eeriness that could only be fitting for a band called Mount Eerie.
The album’s remaining 10 tracks alternate between softer, atmospheric darkness and more furious blasts of metal-inspired fuzz, a duality that creates a perfect balance, one that finds Elverum’s soft and stoic demeanor providing the human voice that teeters somewhere in between. “My Heart Is Not at Peace” is a dark and brooding number, whereas “The Hidden Stone” erupts into another destructive, distorted monster. Electronic pulses and sweeping brushes of cymbal make “Wind Speaks” into a beautiful standout, while those cymbals become more like violent weaponry in the chaotic rumble of “The Mouth of The Sky.” After alternating between harrowing rockers and unsettling ambience, Elverum issues a reasonably catchy indie pop song in “Between Two Mysteries,” a lovely and impeccably crafted highlight inspired by the score of Twin Peaks. “Ancient Questions” is similarly stunning and approachable, all shimmering keyboards and bassy, reverb-heavy guitar; simply gorgeous.
While “Lost Wisdom Pt. 2” may reincorporate the name of Mount Eerie’s previous album, the sound unleashed is miles from it, a buzzing hellish march that echoes the violent wind themes throughout the album and in Elverum’s lyrics: “I think the screaming wind said my name.” And while “Stone’s Ode” may be one of the album’s prettier, softer songs, it actually references Burzum, one of the most infamous figures in black metal.
Much like the gusts of air in the album’s title and in the themes that blow throughout, Wind’s Poem is a force of nature. One of Phil Elverum’s most densely layered albums, in addition to one of his most destructive, it’s an exciting, if extremely intense, new side of the Pacific Northwest singer/songwriter’s music. While just about everything Elverum does proves to be interesting at a minimum, Wind’s Poem stands out as one of his best and most accomplished works.
Label: P.W. Elverum and Sun
Year: 2009
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