Review: Mount Eerie - Black Wooden EP

Mount Eerie – Black Wooden EP
Southern Records 2009

[tags: folk, dark, ep, great!, happy new year]

Listen while reading:

Appetite (from Black Wooden EP)

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Last post for 2009 and well, I think if features some very nice music that was released just before 2010. The man I’m talking about is not an unknown one and so there is not much to say about him or his music even though I wouldn’t consider me as the biggest adept of his oeuvre. So, you may have guessed it (or you did read the headline of this post), I’m talking about Phil Elverum aka Mount Eerie (former The Microphones) and his new EP release Black Wooden (though he calls it a LP in his shop) (thanks to Hlynur Gudjonsson for reminding me of it and providing important information).

Black Wooden is the follow up of the great Lost Wisdom record from 2008 (that featured Julie Doiron – yap, that’s right, the Julie form Daniel, Fred & Julie who just recently released their self-titled collaboration debut on You Have Changed Records) and two other releases (namely the CD, that was included in a book with journal entries called Dawn and a 12’’ LP called Wind’s Poem – but sadly I don’t know neither the first nor the second one).

But let’s switch over to the music of Black Wooden. The EP features 6 tracks which were recorded at the Southern Studios in London back in 2007. They are dark and got some ambient moments in them, but not electronic ambient moments, more the ambient mood created by minimalistic guitar play and longer instrumental parts in the tracks (best example for that is the title track). Both acoustic and electric guitar create an interesting duo – the first soft and fragile, the latter hard and compelling. In the middle of  this there is Mister Elverums unique and characteristic voice that’s loaded with depression and that sounds like it travelled a very long way just to realize that the whole journey was useless – exhausted might be the right word to describe it.

Along with the mentioned ambient sound it is plain and simple a folk record through and through. It got the typical reflective lyrics, lots of emotion in the voice, relatively simple instrumentation (just the guitars and voice) and a somber overall atmosphere. The tracks are heavy and you have to chew on them a bit to get really into them. But if this point is reached, you will see the sheer unbelievable deepness of every single note and second of it. Maybe it is a bit too early to say so, but I think this EP will certainly make it in my EP Top List of 2010.

And, as I said before, I’m certainly not the one who knows the most about Mount Eerie’s music, but I think that this EP is a great way to get started with. I for myself needed Black Wooden to spend some more time on Mount Eerie in the future to get rid of the status of “Surley, I know him, but what does he sound like?” to establish something more fundamental.

You can buy the EP in Mount Eerie’s shop on his website or you order the CD or LP version directly via Southern Records. Also visit him on his MySpace page for further impressions. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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