Wind's Poem

Over his long career, from the K Records days as auteur outsider with the Microphones to his recent solo-geared output as Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum has developed many contiguous lyrical themes. Chief amongst them is the theme of human's relations with nature, and the boundaries of nature and self. He grew up in the shadow of Mt Erie, surrounded by forests and lakes. You can imagine the young Elvrum somewhat askance from the world, skateboarding alone in a place with no paved ground, making his world in the grasses and the trees. Since then he has not abandoned the wilderness for the lure of the city, living in and around his home town of Anacortes for his adult life. In 2002 he spent a year without proper electricity in a Norwegian shack, in the process gathering material for an album and 144 page book both entitled Dawn. His photographic output is heavy with landscapes. His music is frequently concerned with nature, perhaps most succinctly summed up back in 2002 on the singles compilation Song Islands, when in ‘Phil Elvrum’s Will’ a notional account of his dying wishes he declared ”I want wind / I'll trade the traffic for the roaring waves”.

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 El verum 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.