Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem – Album Review
Before I dig into the substance of today’s review, allow me to apologize for the lateness of this post. We here at Citizen Dick Enterprises try to have our posts up bright and early each morning, so you can enjoy top-shelf music criticism with your milk and froot loops. Unfortunately, yesterday Cleveland was hit with a killer heat wave that rendered most of the city, including and especially myself, sluggish and unproductive. Today, the heat goes on, plus I slept in until 11:15 AM. In my defense on that last point, I am a college professor on summer vacation – when exactly do you expect me to get up? Anyhow, all this to say, I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t happen again, but I value your readership too much to make impossible promises. Instead, I’ll try really hard on this one and hope that makes up for it.
When I received today’s album in the mail some time back, after ogling the impressive packaging, I immediately loaded the disc into my laptop and imported the tracks into my iTunes. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I love seeing what details each track contains, like the difference between artist and album artist (hip hop albums are particularly fun here). To say that I was surprised doesn’t begin to describe the emotion I felt when I saw the new Mount Eerie album, Wind’s Poem, had the following genre classification: metal.
Metal? Could that be right? I mean, this is Phil Elverum we are talking about, front-man of seminal lo-fi/indie/fuzz/folk/noise/pop mostly one-man band The Microphones Phil Elverum, right? The Phil Elverum that makes his own art books and gorgeous packing tape and custom hand-screened felt glow-in-the-dark pennants, and has release parties in galleries? Now we are expected to add “metal” to that list of descriptors that otherwise seem to all fit together so snug and fine and appropriate?
I guess so.
When you listen to Wind’s Poem without catching that metal tag, you probably wouldn’t think of using it yourself, but when you notice the tag and then listen to it, you understand why the artist might have chosen that label. (Note: I’m going with the assumption that Elverum decided the album was a metal one, rather than any other individual or business decision.) Furthermore, if you are willing to temporarily abandon the stereotyped sound byte you keep lodged in your brain for easy accessing when labels like metal or, even more so, black metal are bandied about, you’ll either learn or remember how diverse and even occasionally beautiful the outer realms of that genre can be.
That’s right, beautiful. Because for nearly 55 minutes, Wind’s Poem treats the listener to a sonic spectacle that is as beautiful as any other album this year, and very much so influenced by black metal (as well as pop and anti-folk and other assorted influences).
As fans of previous Elverum offerings might expect, there is A LOT going on here. From track to track, it is impossible to keep up with everything being played back and the only sound listening strategy is to relax and let the sound sweep over you. The notion and, particularly, the vocabulary of wind, as the album title reference hints, is the primary focus on this album, and Elverum has achieved a mighty task: using layer upon layer of distortion to create an organic-sounding expression of wind. Thanks to technology and skill enhancements, modern day record producers can work magic with sound, but never before have I heard a record that creates such complex variations on a single natural phenomena that is almost entirely artificial. Breathtaking, to say the least.
The album begins awash in a noisy and distorted complex chord, and thirty seconds in you hear the initial black metal references, with successive chord changes and dark, sludgy fuzz. The middle part of album-opener “Wind’s Dark Poem” introduces a subtle melody and barely audible vocals, with a conclusion of noise playing out the end of the track. “Through the Trees” presents an abrupt change, beginning with a long church organ chord that gradually, hesitantly changes to another, and then another, like an uncertain wedding procession, stilted and stumbling and confused but fatalistically marching onward down the aisle toward what one hopes will one day resemble bliss. Like the preceding tack, vocals enter in as the song progresses, this time paired perfectly with ambient instrumental joy. “Through the Trees” is the album’s longest track; at 11:33 it is more than double the length of any other track on Wind’s Poem. The length allows Elverum to take his time with the song, moving forward at an impossibly patient pace that delivers just the right message.
Much of the rest of this album has a lot in common with itself – every time there is beauty, noise, distortion, and a guttural underbelly of metal guitar; however, each track also possesses something small and unique and occasionally delicate that sets it apart. On “My Heart Is Not At Peace” there are smooth vocals over a wonderful tympani, while the literally thunderous percussion of “The Mouth Of Sky” presents an abrupt stylistic change from the preceding track (“Summons”) that demands attention.
“Ancient Questions” (incidentally, my favorite track on the album) provides the closest thing to straight pop you’ll hear on Wind’s Poem, though despite its accessibility it is still so far from anything I’d consider mainstream pop. The singing is sweet, even when the lyrics are not, and the feedback mild and seemingly a natural accompaniment. The album closes with the powerful and harmonious “Stone’s Ode,” a song that could be at home on a sampler of what I dub “antique-rock” alongside tracks by bands like Van Occupanther-era Midlake and the entire catalog of The Decemberists.
As a whole, Phil Elverum has given us a tremendous work of art, the world’s best soundtrack to silent and speed-tracked Weather Channel coverage of some passing storm of monstrosity and magnificence. To compare it to other indie rock albums, think if Mark Linkous produced a post-art school Dinosaur Jr., and in so doing was able to get J Mascis to turn down and forego solos, emphasizing Lou Barlow occasionally, and having Murph branch out and almost entirely abandon sticks for brushes and snares for the percussive ephemera found usually only in high school marching band storage rooms. Put another way, this is the album Colin Meloy won’t be able to make for another decade.
A friend of mine recently wrote in a message announcing the latest installment of his film screening series that genre mergers often don’t work very well, but when they do it is something special. Although he was referring to a mixture of vampire horror and kung-fu action, the aphorism holds for this latest Mount Eerie release’s marriage between metal and lo-fi, enhanced-naturalism indie rock. Will Wind’s Poem get me into black metal? Probably not. But it’ll definitely keep me into Mount Eerie.
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