Day Three hundred and twenty eight - When I take out the garbage at night

Who : Mount Eerie

Album name : A Crow Looked at Me

Formed : 2003

From : Anacortes, Washington, U.S.

What does he play :Indie folk / indie rock / experimental / lo-fi (at least according to Wikipedia)

Release date : March 24, 2017

Now, I can't, for the life of me, remember how this album came into my life. I'd know about the band before, yes, though I don't think I ever listened to a single song of theirs before. And to be honest, I haven't listened to any other of their records other than this one. If I look back at when this album came out - 2017 - I can only speculate that because of what I was listening to a lot at the time, that being The Antlers 2009 record 'Hospice', a record which I adore beginning to end, and which is a very serious contender for a desert island disc pick, an album that I had begun revisiting a couple of years prior, and maybe I went out and searched for something that was similar in tone to it, something similar in spirit to it. Because, ultimately, this album does share some of the same sentiment - though its scope and execution greatly differs.

This is a record about grief, something I was heavily pondering about at the time. It's a train of thought I've followed, even unto today. I examine my feelings of sadness, my loneliness, my very infrequent anger at myself, and the disgust and self-loathing I feel for falling prey to shortcuts. It took me many years to realize that I was but grieving for something lost long ago. And music has been my only constant form of catharsis throughout - especially the music that seems to speak directly to my soul. I latch on to those songs and they become permanent fixtures on my playlists. Some songs, I don't go a single day without listening to them. I can't say the same about this album, though. I listened to it a couple of times only when I discovered it, and then I only returned to it in 2019 when me and my friends were doing a 31 day challenge about our favourite comics. In one of the replies, my good friend S. talked about his choice for the day, the heartbreaking 'Rosalie Lightning' by Tom Hart, an autobiographical story about the sudden and unexpected death of his almost two year old daughter. And because the themes of grief and loss weighed heavy on that book, I found myself reaching out for 'A Crow Looked At Me' again.

So what is this album about, after all? Well, it was written after the passing of the wife of the solo artist behind the project - Phil Elverum - due to pancreatic cancer, and in it he speaks about her illness, her death, his grief and his relationship with their small child. As you can imagine, it doesn't make for easy listening. It's heavy and dark and it disturbs you, it makes you think about life and the small things we take for granted and the void they leave when we can never have them again. It speaks to you about the deep, dark places of the soul when grief all but threatens to consume you, or destroy you. This is not something that you slot in a playlist for you to listen to at the gym, and neither is this something you play when you go for a walk in the rain. No, this is a record to be listened to in the dark, maybe while sipping a glass of fine red wine. You want to let the record play, and you want to breathe and think, and maybe allow yourself to shed those tears you've been saving up. This is an exercise in resilience, one that will test you. And maybe, maybe you come out a better person for it.

Not something I will ever go regularly for, or actively seek out, but for those special cathartic moments when you need something to help you along, this one is a must. Five out of five crows.