A Crow Looked at Me

Mount Eerie

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41 minutes 34 seconds

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11 tracks

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March 24th, 2017

indie folk

Amazing

This review does not affect this artist's overall score.

FAVOURITE SONG(s)

Ravens

LEAST FAVOURITE SONG(s)

This is the worst album I've ever listened to. I have genuinely never been utterly destroyed by a piece of media more than this. Deeply, deeply upsetting. Written after the death of his wife from cancer in 2016, this album serves as a compilation of Phil Elverum's grief. These aren't songs. They feel like lamentations of a diary, set against sparse guitar instrumentals. A great description of this album I saw was "This is music, but it isn't entertainment". Every single track punches you in the throat. Line after line of pure grief and desperation. "What about foxgloves, Is that a flower you liked? I can't remember, You did most of my remembering for me". He describes moments after her death that bring him to his knees; a package arriving containing a school-bag for their young daughter that she had ordered online. Sand from the beach where they spread her ashes still trapped in a blanket. Holding doors open as he walks through, forgetting that she's not behind him. There aren't grandiose metaphors or thought out chord progressions here, because as he says, "When real death enters the house, all poetry is dumb".

Real Death

Mount Eerie