Mount Eerie

Now Only

The first time I listened to Now Only, it was raining and I cried for 10 minutes; after it ended, like a body after an exorcism, I felt lighter, and when I looked out of my window, into a black night, there were no crows or rainbows or signs, but inside of my room, inside of my body light gleamed.

Now Only is just as devastatingly direct, but there are glimmers of catharsis—of light gleaming in tears, as Elverum puts it. Where Crow occupied a numb, purgatorial present tense, the new record leaps around like a wandering mind, to vivid anecdotes from the singer-songwriter’s past.

There are only six tracks here, but they cover massive lyrical ground ... Combined with spare arrangements that highlight hypnotic acoustic strums, moody keys and even a some fuzz-drenched rock-outs, the result is an emotionally nuanced meditation on death that is both heartbreaking and hopeful.

If A Crow was an implosion, a recitation of the impact of Castrée’s death on Elverum’s soul, Now Only curls outward, picking up the pieces of the wreckage and, as he sings, “holding all your things, resisting the inevitable.”

Like its predecessor, Now Only lays profoundly bare Elverum’s grief. But although it is often an excruciating listen, it also finds room to step, however briefly, outside of the agony that marked its predecessor, if just for long enough to suggest that Elverum is, somehow, beginning to find some relief in the unbearable.

There's no great catharsis or climax here, naturally, but the songs are longer and more deliberately composed than A Crow Looked at Me.

Now Only isn’t as easily categorized as its predecessor. These songs arrive with such urgency, such purpose, that it feels all-encompassing: part-memoir, part magnum opus.

... this album is still going to be about the loss of his love, but one that shows a bit of distance, a new perspective, and the healing power of music, which is explored throughout the album’s six tracks.

Many will see it as Crow Pt. 2, which is fair, and there’s no telling when or if Elverum will go back to spinning fantasies about the vastness of the universe. It’d be a stretch to say he’s doing better, but at least he’s figuring things out, and that’s a good sign.

While Elverum maintains A Crow Looked at Me's stripped-down, vérité style of singing and playing, his artistry is more apparent on Now Only.

A Crow Looked At Me sequentially chronicled the passage of time, from the raw immediacy of Castrée’s death happening to the record’s conclusion months later. But Elverum clearly still has more he wants to say and on Now Only, he’s created another outstanding, although sometimes almost unbearably bleak, album covering very similar territory.

The masculinity-defying diffidence of Elverum's voice  couldn’t be more indie, but his words now add all the weight he needs.

Just like Crow, there's a lot to take in. But Elverum remains unflinchingly committed to his art, where he begins to accept that there may be more to life than death, after all.