Mount Eerie
Sauna
[P.W. Elverum & Sun]
Off the back of his considerable achievements as The Microphones, Phil Elverum has been subject to a level of fanboy dedication unlike that offered to the majority of his contemporaries. His instantly recognisable reedy voice and manic fluctuation between whisper quiet and ear bleed loud extremes stirs a particular place in the hearts of sad acts (your reviewer included) the world over.
Every Mount Eerie release manages to accrue a certain amount of ardent support but Sauna feels remarkable even with the consistency of Elverum’s oeuvre. As the record gently unfurls from the opening ambient textures through to rumbling, lethargic indie and into skeletal folk and modern-classical xylophone plonks, it becomes apparent that we have a gem of meditative headphone music on our hands.
Sauna’s array of ambient sounds provide each track with an air of geographic specificity that Elverum then toys with, blurring the distinction between what’s soothing steam and what are bracing blasts of freezing fog. Though rarely treading the same sonic ground as the black metal he became obsessed with recently, Elverum shares a similar mental landscapes of leafless branches stretching toward an infinite, unknowable sky. Simultaneously unshackled in scope while claustrophobic in tone, top-to-bottom Phil’s latest is wholly brilliant.
Words: Danny Wilson
Like this? Try these:
The Microphones – The Glow, pt. 2
