Need a good cry? Mount Eerie just dropped the heartbreaking video for the equally heartbreaking new song, “Ravens,” and man…just have some tissues ready.
The track is the second offering off of Mount Eerie’s (aka Phil Elverum) new album A Crow Looked At Me, which is out this March 24. Accompanied by nothing but an acoustic guitar, Elverum lays out his grief and anguish after the loss of his wife, Genevieve Elverum, in her fight with pancreatic cancer. The song plays more like a long rant than an actual song, where Elverum recounts memories both good and bad with his loved one, as well as the pain and suffering he is now left with, along with his infant daughter who was born just four months before the passing of Genevieve.
He recalls working in the yard and seeing two black birds staring at him, knowing it was an omen. The dread continues as he describes watching his wife suffer, her body “changed.” While it isn’t particularly pleasant, it is an incredible powerful track. As the song plays various clips of natural landscape (on dreary days) are mixed with home recordings of the two prior to her passing.
“These songs are not fun,” said Elverum. “The songs are about the brutal details of that experience, from the hospitalizations to the grieving, the specific domestic banalities that become existential in the context of such huge and abrupt loss.”
Elverum, however, sees the silver lining even in the particularly devastating music.
“They are pretty and they are deep, and they find a love that prevails beneath the overwhelming and real sorrow.”
Along with the new video, Mount Eerie announced a short spring tour. Check out the dates along with the new video below and keep an eye out for the album this March.
Mount Eerie Tour Dates:
Buy tickets on Ticketfly
April 4 – Eugene, OR – WOW Hall
April 6 – Big Sur, CA – Henry Miller Library
April 9 – Santa Ana, CA – Observatory (When We Were Young Fest)
April 10 – San Diego, CA – Irenic
April 11 – Los Angeles, CA – The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever
April 14 – Oakland, CA – Starline Social Club
April 17 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
April 18 – Olympia, WA – Obsidian
May 12 – 14 – Arcosanti, AZ (FORM)
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