Sometimes a life is examined too closely. Details far too personal begin to shimmer through cracks in a facade until it is nothing but broken pieces scattered on the ground. Oftentimes musicians attempt to walk a fine line between these states, leaving enough reality to entice, but allowing an enticing outward image so as to not intimidate. Phil Elverum has never walked this line, his music plays too close to the skin, oftentimes cutting deeper that, and at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church his performance of his latest string of albums broke the skin.
Oftentimes when evaluating a live show certain terms get tossed around, things like “crowd engagement” and “stage presence.” People who talk about these things are not trying to be facetious, it’s typically a decent way of determining the success of a concert. When it comes to a modern-day Mount Eerie show, all that goes out the window. It seems excessive to go over the history of the album, given the fervor that surrounded last year’s A Crow Looked at Me, but as a brief overview both that album and his latest release Now Only were released in the wake of his wife’s death after their daughter was born.
The albums, and by extension their live performances are accordingly raw. This all circles back to say that the sanctuary was silent for the duration of each song. The loudest interruptions being coughs and the shuffle of feet heading towards balcony seating. Phones were rarely seen, with a small few capturing brief videos and photos of the event. It felt rather fitting to be in a chapel, anyone who grew up in a church would know this atmosphere, it was a sermon, a bleeding, an open confession.
There are some shows that have an impact that far outlasts their duration. This was plainly one of them, from the stunned silence of the audience during “Earth,” to the actual laughter that uncomfortably erupted from the crowd as he rambled about speaking to Father John Misty and Weyes Blood at a festival outside Skrillex’s tour bus. While it is to be expected that the experience is a catharsis for Elverum, it ended up being much the same for the audience.
While A Crow Looked at Me is bleak and hopeless, a series of songs detailing life at ground zero, Now Only is a record of acceptance that doesn’t claim to know the answers, but instead presents the known facts and results thereof. The concerts aren’t easy, for performer or audience, they are hard, painful and all too close to the skin. But they will be remembered, they are necessary and much like the albums that spring from such tragedy, they affirm our own existence in indescribable ways.
Setlist
Distortion
Ravens
Forest Fire
Soria Moria
Crow
Crow Part 2
Now Only
Earth
Two Paintings by Nikolai Astrup
Tintin in Tibet
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