Stream the new Mount Eerie album at NPR now

Mount Eerie 

In this first of two new albums planned for release in 2012, Mount Eerie presents a monumental work of depth and maturity.  These are songs about a quiet life in and around a small northwest town, usually buried in fog, and the unexpected moments of clarity that briefly flash through.  Clear Moon is the resonant lone bell symbol, the glint in the water, the sudden breath.

For over thirteen years Phil Elverum has been releasing beguiling records from and about the Pacific Northwest, first as the Microphones and since 2004 as Mount Eerie.  The thread has sometimes been challenging to follow, meandering into weird EPs and live experiments, but there have always been punctuations of cohesive sound and idea, made giant;  The Glow pt. 2 (2001), Mount Eerie (2003), Lost Wisdom (2008),Wind's Poem (2009), and now Clear Moon (to be followed later this year by its companion album, Ocean Roar).

After all the world-touring that followed the release of Wind's Poem, Phil Elverum has spent 2 years establishing a new recording studio, "the Unknown", in an old de-sanctified church in Anacortes, Washington.  These 2 new albums, Clear Moon andOcean Roar, are the first Mount Eerie recordings to be released from the new old space.  You can hear the giant wooden cathedral room in these songs.  Vast echo, resonating gongs, impenetrable walls of thickness, and always a voice cutting through the fog, moon-like.  

The sound is not lo-fi as it is sometimes called.  It's also not hi-fi.  These are just crazy recordings, bigger and deeper than any real-life fjord.  It's 100% analog, and it is a sound that can only come from 15 months of studio solitude, crushing tape, riding waves of fake strings, finding new angles on "intensity".  The music of Popol Vuh was inspirational, as well as explorers from black metal such as Menace Ruine, Nadja, and others.  Contemporaries in theme can be found in the heavy sacred regionalism of Olympia's Wolves In The Throne Room.  Ultimately, this is music on its own island, unlike anything else;  a break in the clouds and a view of a hidden new landscape.

MOUNT EERIE

05/15 Edmonton, AB Wunderbar

05/16 Calgary, AB Central United Church

06/17 Olympia, WA Northern 414 1/2 Legion Way

06/18 Portland, OR 4321 SE Hawthorne

06/19 Portland, OR Valentine's

06/20 Seattle, WA 20/20 Cycle

06/21 Vancouver, BC Rickshaw Theatre

06/22 Nanaimo, BC TBA

06/23 Victoria, BC The Fifty Fifty

07/13 - 07/15 Anacortes, WA 1st Anacortes Unknown Music Series

08/24 - 08/26 Rochester, WA Helsing Junction Sleepover

 

Mount Eerie

Clear Moon

(P.W. Elverum and Sun)

Street Date: May 22, 2012

1. Through The Trees pt. 2
2. the Place Lives
3. the Place I Live
4. (something)
5. Lone Bell
6. House Shape
7. Over Dark Water
8. (something)
9. Clear Moon
10. Yawning Sky
11. (synthesizer)