I have seen Mount Eerie play in small storefront venues in Olympia. I've listened to them in dorm rooms scattered throughout my college campus, on airplanes, in cars, in tents, in my childhood bedroom, at beach houses, in cabins in the woods, on ferries, at ex-girlfriends' childhood homes, in lake houses. I could go on, but the point is that Mount Eerie is about Phil Elverum grappling with his place in the world and the effect nature has on that. It's the kind of grandiose music that feels so personal that you kind of feel like an asshole for playing it around anyone else, but it's still universal, and as sad as it can get, there's never really a bad time to listen to Mount Eerie. It's more just a question of what you want that particular moment in your life to turn into, because putting on literally any record Elverum has been involved in invokes a hush. Things are serious. Life is worth contemplating. Maybe that's why this video of Elverum and a couple backup singers doing "Ocean Roar" in the empty Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC works so well. It's a huge space. Sounds echo religiously.
(via NPR)
