Artist: Mount Eerie (feat. Julie Doiron and Fred Squire)
Album: Lost Wisdom
Released: October 2008
Label: P.W. Elverum & Sun
Hometown: Anacortes, Washington
Rating: 8.9 out of 10
As with my favorite of music, this record was passed on to me by my great buddy Mike Adams. He just gave it to me and told me that he was pretty sure that I would like it. From now on I'm betting on his instincts (as if his taste was questionable...it's not). I can't claim to be down on Mount Eerie's previous stuff which is the pet-project of Phil Elverum who's former project was the well-liked and revered Microphones. This new record features old and new songs in duet stylings with the wonderful and heartbreaking voice belonging to Julie Doiron the leader of now-defunct and revered Eric's Trip.
It takes some pretty fortified sinew to start our your record with a song that's twice as long as the rest of the songs, but from the moment the first notes of the title track kick in, you are on for a slow-paced and absorbing ride. The real story here is the subtlety of the duet-style vocals and the minimalist guitar work of Fred Squire. The vocals shape-shift and switch harmonies and melodies between each other as if they were playing a wonderful game of hot potato. Julie Doiron's voice is gorgeous if devastating as she adds to songs like "Voice in Headphones" and my personal favorite "With My Hands Out" which were also featured on the wonderful record "Dawn" which was a CD that was included in a recent book put out by Elverum. There are also wonderful tracks like the ominous "Grave Robbers" and I couldn't leave you without one of my favorite, if perplexing, pieces of lyrical mastery when Elverum and Doiron croon on "What?" when it closes with, "Visible inside/Dumb and blind/Newborn babies come to life on my face/They say, 'Ta Da!". The song "What?" seems to be a companion piece to the magnificent "Who?" which projects pertinent questions and responses like "What do I want with my life now that you're gone?/I want you're ghost gone."
This album is slow and methodical like a grand joining of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's simplicity and the mood entrancing of Sun Kil Moon. I have, not joking, listened to this record probably about 25 times this week. It's one of those records that holds you in that state between sadness and joy where there doesn't seem to be a line at all.
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