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Oct 22, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Mount Eerie

Mount Eerie (aka Phil Elverum) is releasing a new album, Lost Wisdom pt. 2, that’s a collaboration with singer Julie Doiron, on November 8 via P.W. Elverum & Sun. Now he has shared its second single, “Belief pt. 2.” Listen below, followed by Mount Eerie’s upcoming tour dates.

Elverum had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Belief pt. 2’ is the last song on the album. It comes at the end of a meandering path through uncertainty, devotion, sad reminiscence, hopeful idealism; songs coursing over uneven terrain. This album conclusion is a flag planted, a declaration of belief in love no matter what, the culminating answer to all of the asking that came before. Eroded down by life’s changes to an elemental necessity, I make an offering of a final simple gesture of love.

“Julie and I recorded this song at night with the doors and windows all the way open, hoping to get the nighthawks and night air onto the recording. The other songs were recorded during the day, but this song is a night song. We tried to make our version of sacred music, under stars in the high dark cool air.”

Previously Mount Eerie shared Lost Wisdom pt. 2‘s first single, “Love Without Possession,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Mount Eerie also shared a trailer for the album.

In 2008 Elverum and Doiron previously collaborated on the Mount Eerie album Lost Wisdom.

In 2017 Elverum released an acclaimed album, A Crow Looked At Me, which was followed in March 2018 by another equally acclaimed album, Now Only (which was our Album of the Week). Both were written after his first wife, Geneviève Elverum (née Gosselin and also known as Geneviève Castrée), passed away in July 2016 after losing her fight with pancreatic cancer. Geneviève was a musician and comic book artist who had recorded as both Woelv and Ô Paon. Geneviève was diagnosed with inoperable, stage four pancreatic cancer just four months after giving birth to their daughter and died a year later, leaving Elverum to raise their infant daughter on his own. But then in July 2018 it was announced that Elverum had secretly married actress Michelle Williams. Alas, Elverum and Williams have since divorced and perhaps Lost Wisdom pt. 2 tackles that in some way. In September 2018 Mount Eerie also released the live album (after).

Elverum had this to say about the album in a previous press release:

“What is it about a bonfire?

The flames are charismatic and dance, the sparks billow and flicker off. But what is beneath? In smoldering embers that stay alive until the next morning there is a slow endlessness. The flashing whims of light and dark pass by without stopping, but the glowing coals beneath the action offer a new perspective. Something approaching permanence in the relentlessly impermanent world.

In all these years of making up songs, the aim has always been to just say the thing as directly as possible. Name it, don’t decorate. Nonetheless, what has come out has often appeared as billowing clouds of metaphor and half-formed feelings. Then in the shadow of close real death in 2016 I made a couple of records that managed a little better to speak directly. The terror in opening up so unreservedly to an abstract public was blown away by the higher stakes of actual death.

Nothing stops changing. Love returned. With this love came a new understanding of the weird balances between real life and art projects, between home and exposure. I moved into a new world and happily angled the work inward, keeping more quiet.

But nothing stops changing. It didn’t work out and I had to move again. Finding myself staring into another fire, disoriented by the changes, these songs came out.

I hoped to write songs about the smoldering foundation beneath all of this surface chaos, a love that doesn’t die, songs beyond mere sorrow. If I again mined the circumstances of my life for these words, I tried to do it with liberation in mind for everyone. I tried to make songs that did not rely at all on who I am or who I am singing about. ‘The song, not the singer’ is my guide, even while singing inescapably as and about myself.

Knowing that anyone with internet access might have questions about my specifics, I don’t want to say anything personal that isn’t already in the songs. My fingers are crossed that when I push them out to sea they will be met with calm humane understanding. That’s what they’re about after all.

In a grab for deeper continuity, I called and asked Julie Doiron if she could join me in the recording. She has been my favorite singer since 1993 when I first heard her band Eric’s Trip and subsequently devoted my life to music and art. This 26 year path from teenage obsession to collaborator has made me feel very fortunate. We made another record in 2008 called Lost Wisdom, more flames, more love, more turmoil. Now we get to do some more singing and playing together.

In 2019 life on earth can feel insane, but in the early hours before the sun comes up, I look out and the world is blank. Everyone deserves liberation, and as the sky gets blue and loud with the day I try to remember this blank peace and I hope that it will stay with us into the wild arriving future.

- Phil Elverum
Sept. 5th, 2019”

Read our 2017 interview with Mount Eerie about A Crow Looked At Me.

Read our 2018 interview with Mount Eerie about Now Only.

Mount Eerie Tour Dates:

Tue. Oct. 29 - Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater w/ Big Thief (w/o Julie Doiron)
Sat Nov. 30 - Vancouver BC @ Christ Church Cathedral
Sun. Dec. 1 - Victoria, BC @ Alix Goolden Hall
Tue. Dec.3 - Seattle, WA @ The Neptune
Wed. Dec. 4 - Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Fri. Dec. 6 - Sonoma, CA @ Sebastiani Theatre
Sat. Dec. 7 - Los Angeles, CA @ Masonic Temple at Hollywood Forever
Sat. Dec. 7 - - Los Angeles, CA @ Masonic Temple at Hollywood Forever
Sun. Dec. 8 - Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
Mon. Dec. 9 - Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
Tue. Dec. 10 - Columbus, OH @ Via Vecchia
Wed. Dec. 11 - Toronto, ON @ Great Hall
Thu. Dec. 12 - Montreal, QC @ Red Roof
Fri. Dec. 13 - Boston, MA @ Arts at the Armory
Sat. Dec. 14 - Brooklyn, NY @ St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church
Sun. Dec. 15 - Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Sanctuary
Mon. Dec. 16 - Washington, DC @ Miracle Theatre

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