Mount Eerie

With his post-Microphones project Mount Eerie, Phil Elverum has explored achingly intimate subject matter through his lo-fi folk. The first proper Mount Eerie record, No Flashlight—by turns sparse, booming, and mesmerizing—arrived in 2005 after a couple of scrappier releases. Elverum has been prolific and collaborative in the ensuing years, teaming up with Canadian songwriters Julie Doiron and Fred Squire for 2008’s ghostly Lost Wisdom; exploring atmospheric Norwegian black-metal influences on 2009’s Wind’s Poem; and releasing two remarkably heavy 2012 records, Clear Moon and Ocean Roar. Then again, heaviness is Elverum’s modus operandi—his unflinching willingness to confront loss and grief is in sharpest relief on 2017’s A Crow Looked at Me, on which he deals with his wife Geneviève Castrée’s passing from pancreatic cancer with overwhelming openness, as on the quiet “Real Death.” In 2018, Now Only unpacked his attempts to move forward after that loss, while Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2, with Doiron, exudes the warmth of collaboration even in Elverum’s signature weightiness.