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Aug
19
Song in a Jar: Mount Eerie, “Stone’s Ode”
Filed Under Updates
When I heard Phil Elverum would be making a Mount Eerie album influenced by Scandinavian black metal, I worried. Black metal typically manifests as maudlin nihilism, and hasn’t drawn me in. While Wind’s Poem does contain some chaotic, heavy, distorted passages, it also goes subdued with tracks like this one, which closes the album. It also bears mentioning that Elverum has tended to punctuate with noise and distortion throughout his career, last year’s Lost Wisdom being a notable exception.
On “Stone’s Ode” the lyrics work with familiar Elverum themes. The stone is a solid thing which an unseen wind works to destroy. This fits into the existence vs. annihilation, ephemera of the body vs. the juggernaut of nature, sort of dichotomies Mount Eerie has always dealt in. To say the lyrics are heavy, weary, and obsessed with death is to say it’s a Mount Eerie song.
The music narrates the lyrics without straying into over-exposition. An ever-present synth line voices the wind, in the background and wearing away. When night falls, the key of the song shifts down and hangs on one chord as cymbals build. The song returns and moves to a quick end. Through this, the music manages to stay light, and becomes lighter as voices sing a wordless song, which we might assume is the wind. We know that for Elverum the wind is a destroyer, but the song indicates that at times it does slow, gentle work. The song plays with heaviness and lightness, which also happens from song to song on the rest of the album.
Listen to the entire album on NPR’s Exclusive First Listen.
Buy the record from Phil.
MP3: Mount Eerie - “Stone’s Ode”
-Josh Stevenson lives and works in Moscow, ID.
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