na: mt. eerie

I had written off the lil’ buck years ago, but — summabitch — Phil Elvrum has finally made something worth listening to again: Mount Eerie Pts. 6 & 7, which arrived today. Ever since the first Mount Eerie record four years ago, Elvrum — who used to record as the Microphones — has turned farther and farther inward, self-releasing EPs, singles and albums with increasingly diminishing returns (including an atrocious stop smoking single!). Just last week I woulda surmised that a daily cassette-only release schedule of woodchuck sounds would be in his very near future…

But this new EP — four tracks, 24 minutes — is really kinda something. Not quite the genius of “Solar System” or “The Pull” or The Glow Pt. 2, but without question the best work we’ve been privileged enough to get out of him in years. Though the ambitious shards of Mount Eerie remain (an ultimately unintentionally silly concept album), the songs nestled in the middle of the found nature sounds and grandiosities are gorgeously simple folk tunes sung by a young American man who is in awe of the world, and tragically fearful of it as well. Well worth your time.