“Is anyone trying to sell an amp?” Phil Elverum asks. He is sincere, and when a few people from the audience yell responses, he says, “No, really. It has to be loud…at least a hundred watts.” The man behind Mount Eerie had apparently blown his amp right before the show at Art Damage Lodge on Wednesday night. The incident is actually a pretty accurate indicator of what to anticipate during the set, an abridged version of Mount Eerie’s latest album, Wind’s Poem.
As soon as the band gathers onstage, it’s obvious this will be a departure from previous Mount Eerie shows. Gone is the organic intimacy recalled from Mount Eerie’s 2008 performance, in which Elverum played quietly amidst the crowd seated on the floor. This time, he is joined by a full band – consisting of tour mates No Kids and guitarist Tara Jane O’Neil – in order to recreate what has been described as his most fully realized album to date.
Though Elverum scoffs at reviewers’ use of “black metal” to describe Mount Eerie’s new sound, it’s difficult not to use the genre to describe the rumbling distortion and immersive guitar fuzz that envelop his lyrics, which revisit themes of nature and mortality. Elverum’s voice still maintains its hushed reservation, but this time it competes with the loudness of droning, heavy guitars and the blast-beats of not one, but two drummers. Even still, the more sonically epic songs were broken up by surprisingly upbeat – even poppy – songs like the Twin Peaks-influenced “Between Two Mysteries.”
Though the set was drastically louder, heavier, darker than previous shows, Mount Eerie ended the set in the usual fashion. “Thank you for coming,” Phil Elverum said politely, “Goodbye.”
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