| Tinymixtapes |
 From The Microphones to Mount Eerie, singer/songwriter/label owner Phil Elverum has always stood out by dint of the care he puts into his every project. Whether it be his live shows — where spontaneity is almost recklessly responsible for the outcome — or his delicately packaged LPs and books and LP/book combos, the micro-indie troubadour manages to convey a rare sense of purpose.
This purpose comes through in his interviews and other works, but most of all through his music. It’s always been so mysterious, so rewarding (but in a gradual way); Elverum never sells his listeners short, giving them the chance to be in on his little secrets if they can muster the patience to stick around for the long haul. His deliberate patience-testing and long-form art cycles can be difficult to muster the strength for, yet those who have stayed hypnotized show no signs of waking up to this day. Mount Eerie’s albums do what indie-rock albums are supposed to do: repel the majority and fascinate the minority....full text |
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| Pitchfork |
At this point, some 13 years after those first Microphones cassettes and eight years since the watershed The Glow, Pt. 2, we tend to know what to expect from Phil Elverum. The production will be cavernous and downright primordial, the instruments resounding as though carved from bone and strung with wool. Natural and elemental imagery will abound. And, of course, we'll be treated to Elverum's unmistakable, unsophisticated, ever wonder-struck mumble. Yet Elverum has a way of playing with those expectations. And, more to the point, knowing what to expect can make us underestimate, which can in turn lead to surprise. If last year's Lost Wisdom outing with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire served to remind us that, stripped of all the scuzz and sonic bramble, Elverum is a damn good songwriter, then Wind's Poem now reminds us that with all his characteristic production dressings in place-- surprise!-- Phil can still be a force of nature.
Poem has been touted as Elverum's "black metal" album, and Phil has made no secret of his relatively newfound affinity for Xasthur and other lynchpins of the unholy genre. Yet apart from opener "Wind's Dark Poem", a slice of bona fide hellfire, any outside influence here feels wholly absorbed into the fabric of what is every bit a Mount Eerie concoction. Even "Wind's Dark Poem" retains the singer's characteristic vocal delivery and cadence, and other loud ones-- "The Hidden Stone", "The Mouth of Sky"-- smack as much of the chunky, bowel-rattling heavy riffage of The Glow, Pt. 2's "I Want to Be Cold" and "Samurai Sword" as anything else. All of which makes Elverum less chameleon and more collector of sounds, assimilating them as he sees fit to suit his grand artistic vision. A vision, as he also told us, that's been there all along: "I think I've always been drawn to things that sounded massive, or at least created this feeling of an immense vibe."...full text |
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| Allmusic |
| A title like Wind's Poem suggests fleeting delicacy, but there's far more to these songs than that. If this double-album sprawl really was a poem, it would be more epic than haiku, combining Phil Elverum's musings on erosion and mortality with sounds that touch on ambient black metal, field recordings, and David Lynch soundtracks. Elverum has been fascinated with these motifs for some time -- "I Want Wind to Blow" and "You'll Be in the Air" are two of the finest songs on the Microphones' The Glow, Pt. 2, Mount Eerie was a meditation on death and spirituality, and Black Wooden Ceiling Opening documented his first flirtations with metal -- but Wind's Poem is still some of the most impressive music Elverum has recorded under any of his aliases. The album captures the, well, eerie sounds of wind powering through the air like an emotion, spanning wistful breezes and raging three-day blows. The opening track, "Wind's Dark Poem," is definitely the latter, rushing at listeners with gale-force distortion far bigger and heavier than anything on previous Elverum albums. The tornado whipping around him feels more akin to Jesu, Sunn 0))), or even ambient noise artists like Xela, yet it's just as beautiful in its own intense way as his gentler songs are. It's an extreme way to begin Wind's Poem, especially because Mount Eerie's two prior albums, Lost Wisdom and Dawn, were almost painfully quiet. Not all of Wind's Poem is this furious, although many of its noisiest tracks are among its highlights. "The Hidden Stone" actually uses its sound and fury as a buffer, making it just as intimate as any of Elverum's whispery tracks; likewise, "Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2"'s hypnotic drones pull listeners into the eye of the song's storm. He balances these outbursts with moments that are equally gentle, most strikingly on "Through the Trees," an 11-minute outsider's lullaby so slow it would be maddening if its warmth and subtle textural shifts weren't so hypnotic. Elverum's production touches complete the unique atmosphere, ranging from the finely chopped cymbals that top "Summons"' guitar rumble to the layered depth that adds to "My Heart Is Not at Peace"'s funereal desolation. Wind's Poem's second half boasts some of its most exciting experiments. Aided by No Kids' Nick Krgovich, Elverum dives deeper into unusual pop than he has in some time, particularly on "Between Two Mysteries," which recasts the minor-key whoosh of "Laura Palmer's Theme" from Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks soundtrack as the backdrop to gamelan-tinged percussion and sprightly guitars, and "Ancient Questions," the sparkling keyboards and guitars of which are like the clouds parting compared to some of the more blustery moments here. Wind's Poem strikes a balance between accessibility and ambition that offers something for every kind of Elverum fan, but never sacrifices its purpose in the process....full text |
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