by Nick Benson (@andtheclock)
No path in music is more frequented than that of the love song. Every artist invariably wants their say, but truly fresh takes can be elusive. There are painfully few songwriters who can cut through the noise, offering lyrics that are worthy of a pause for thought and a glance at the liner notes. Mount Eerie has never struggled for originality, and his latest effort (joined by Julie Doiron for a continuation of their 2008 collab) is no different.
As is maybe to be expected, love and loss are at the very heart of Lost Wisdom pt. 2—while Phil Elverum’s late wife Geneviève is never mentioned by name, her presence lingers across every note. The album leans into its own contradictory nature, pairing spacious silences with hurried guitar drones and measured poetry with unbridled grief. At times you can almost bathe in the album’s stillness, soft dueted harmonies blending with gentle acoustic strings and barely-present percussion. In brief moments, such as on “Widows,” Elverum’s stream-of-consciousness deliveries rage within a chaotic, Microphones-esque musical patchwork, pointing towards a fire that lurks even in the album’s quieter moments. As Elverum puts it himself, “I hoped to write songs about the smoldering foundation beneath all of this surface chaos, a love that doesn’t die, songs beyond mere sorrow.”
For all the tragedy in Elverum’s story, however, he and Doiron have not delivered a work of “sad songs.” Hope and despair are woven deftly into the album’s narrative, often finding unexpected resolution. While death is first on the album’s agenda, the record’s imagery bursts with life, as much a contemplation on the beauty of existence as it is on the anguish of bereavement. The song book intimately links love and nature to where we cannot be sure that any distinction is drawn between the two concepts at all. In the last track, “Belief pt. 2,” Elverum and Doiron sing, “There’s an ocean that awaits us / spreading out on all sides / We could swim, / we could dissolve there. I love you.” The album constantly moves in and out of these natural metaphors, crafting a collection of songs that are both deeply personal and undeniably universal. We are left to ponder how easily words like “I love you” are dashed off, but how powerfully those words change when the person on the other end is no longer there to hear them.
Each song presents a different vignette: the magnificence of a garbage pile in “When I Walk Out Of The Museum,” a Xasthur-infused subway ride in “Enduring The Waves,” a gathering of heartbroken single parents outside the school gates in “Widows.” For all the stories, Lost Wisdom pt. 2’s brilliance lies in its introspection. Elverum’s examination of love is tinged with solipsism, painting a picture of a man struggling with the ineffability of his everyday life. What ultimately bursts from this struggle is a gorgeous work of poetry set to music, and an album that must really be listened to rather than read about.