Phil Elverum didn't want to make an "artistic" statement. He didn't want to craft a metaphor or build a conceptual world like he did with The Glow Pt. 2. He just had a dead wife. And a baby. And a house full of her things that suddenly felt like ghosts. When people talk about Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me, they usually use words like "harrowing" or "devastating," but those descriptions almost feel too cheap. It’s an album that exists because the alternative—silence—was probably worse.
Death is usually handled in music with a certain level of poetic distance. We get "Tears in Heaven" or "Candle in the Wind." We get metaphors about light and crossing over. Elverum threw all of that in the trash. He tells us right at the start: "Death is real / Someone’s there and then they’re not / And it’s not for singing about / It’s not for making into art." Then, he proceeds to make art out of it anyway, mostly because he didn't know what else to do with his hands.
The Reality of Geneviève Castrée’s Passing
To understand the weight of this record, you have to know what happened before the microphones were turned on. Phil Elverum, the mastermind behind the influential lo-fi project The Microphones and later Mount Eerie, lived a quiet life in Anacortes, Washington. He was married to Geneviève Castrée, a brilliant Canadian cartoonist and musician.
They had a daughter. Four months later, Geneviève was diagnosed with inoperable stage IV pancreatic cancer.
She died in July 2016. Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me was recorded in the months immediately following her death. It wasn't recorded in a professional studio with high-end preamps. Phil sat in the room where she died. He used her instruments. He wrote lyrics on her scraps of paper. It is less of a musical composition and more of a public autopsy of a broken heart.
The album isn't "sad" in the way a breakup song is sad. It’s documentary. It’s the sound of a man looking at a package that arrived in the mail for his dead wife—a backpack she ordered for their daughter—and realizing she will never see the kid wear it. Honestly, it's brutal.
Why Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me Rejects Traditional Songwriting
If you’re looking for hooks, go somewhere else. There aren't any "choruses" here. Most of the songs don't even have a bridge or a discernible structure. Elverum is basically just talking over a rhythmic, muted acoustic guitar or a sparse piano line.
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It feels like a diary entry.
One of the most striking things about the record is the specific detail. In the track "Real Death," he talks about the "mucky month" of August. He mentions the exact date she died. He talks about her toothbrush. This specificity is what makes it so much more painful than a generic song about loss. Most songwriters try to make their work "universal" so everyone can relate to it. Elverum made it so specific to his own life that it became universally understood through its sheer raw honesty.
The Sound of Domestic Ghost Stories
The instrumentation on the record is thin. Intentionally so.
- A cheap drum machine that sounds like a heartbeat.
- An acoustic guitar that feels like it’s being played by someone who hasn't slept in three days.
- The occasional hum of a room or a distant bird.
The album sounds like it's falling apart. Because it is.
In "Seaweed," Elverum describes taking his daughter to a beach where he scattered Geneviève's ashes. He notes that the "craggy point" was actually just a "shitty suburb" and the "ocean was gray." He refuses to romanticize the landscape. This is a massive departure from his earlier work where nature was this grand, mystical force. Here, nature is just a place where things rot and go away.
The Controversy of "Grief Porn" vs. Authentic Expression
There has been a lot of chatter over the years about whether an album this private should even be public. Is listening to Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me a form of voyeurism? Some critics argued that it's too much. That it crosses a line.
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But that's missing the point.
Elverum has been very open in interviews—like his deep dive with Pitchfork or The New Yorker—about the fact that he needed these songs to survive the day. By putting them out, he gave a voice to the "unpoetic" side of grief. The side that involves canceling credit cards and staring at a pile of mail.
He acknowledges the absurdity of his own situation. In "Emptiness pt. 2," he references his older, more philosophical songs about the "void" and "emptiness" and basically admits he had no idea what he was talking about back then. Now that the void has a name and a face, those old songs seem like child's play.
Technical Details: How the Album Was Made
Phil Elverum is a master of the analog. He’s spent his career using 16-track tape machines and physical layering to create massive walls of sound. For this album, he stripped everything.
- Recording Space: Her room. The air in the recordings is the air of the house they shared.
- Instruments: He used her classical guitar and her bass. It's like he's trying to touch her through the vibrations of the strings.
- Lyrics: They weren't "written" as much as they were transcribed from his immediate thoughts.
The lack of reverb is haunting. Usually, reverb gives a sense of space and "dreaminess." This album is dry. It’s right in your ear. It’s claustrophobic. You can hear his breath. You can hear the chair creak. It's the sonic equivalent of a fluorescent light bulb in a cold room.
The Cultural Impact and Legacy
It’s been nearly a decade since this album dropped, and it still occupies a singular space in the indie-folk canon. It didn't "influence" a sound because nobody wants to sound like this. It’s too heavy to be a trend.
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However, it changed how artists approach vulnerability. You can see the DNA of this record in the works of artists like Phoebe Bridgers or Adrianne Lenker, where the "ugly" details of life are prioritized over the "pretty" ones. It gave people permission to be messy.
What We Get Wrong About the Album
A lot of people think you shouldn't listen to it unless you're prepared to cry. That’s not entirely true. While it is sad, it’s also weirdly grounding. It’s a reminder that life is fragile and that the mundane things—the backpacks, the toothbrushes, the "crow" looking at you from the fence—are actually the things that matter.
It isn't a "depressing" album in the clinical sense. It's a "present" album. It forces you to be in the moment with him.
How to Approach Listening to the Album
If you haven't heard it yet, don't put it on as background music while you're doing dishes. You'll miss the point. You’ll just hear a guy mumbling over a guitar.
- Listen with the lyrics in front of you. The words are the architecture.
- Do it in one sitting. It’s only 41 minutes. It’s designed as a single arc of a man trying to process the first few months of a permanent change.
- Don't look for a resolution. There isn't one. The album ends as abruptly as it starts.
Grief doesn't have a "conclusion." It just has a "next day."
Actionable Insights for Fans and New Listeners
If you find yourself moved by the themes of Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me, there are ways to engage with the work and the artist's message beyond just hitting play on Spotify.
- Support the Artist Directly: Buy the physical record or digital files via P.W. Elverum & Sun. Phil runs his own label and ships the records himself. It’s as DIY as it gets.
- Explore Geneviève’s Work: To truly understand the loss, look at what she created. Her graphic novels like Susceptible are masterpieces of the medium and provide a window into her brilliant mind.
- Listen to the Follow-up: Now Only is the companion piece to this album. It’s slightly more "musical" but deals with the surreal experience of playing these death-songs at festivals in front of partying crowds.
- Read the Interviews: Look up Phil's 2017 interview with The Creative Independent. It’s a masterclass on how to continue being an artist when your world has ended.
The album isn't a funeral. It's a monument. It reminds us that when we lose someone, they don't just disappear into the ether. They stay in the "garbage" they left behind, in the "cracks in the floor," and in the songs we’re forced to write because we can’t find any other way to breathe.