Now Only

Elverum may spend the rest of his career grappling with his grief. It’s a tough, beautiful privilege to be invited along on that journey.

Like its predecessor, Now Only lays profoundly bare Elverum’s grief. But although it is often an excruciating listen, it also finds room to step, however briefly, outside of the agony that marked its predecessor, if just for long enough to suggest that Elverum is, somehow, beginning to find some relief in the unbearable.

Now Only is still as wrenching and direct as its predecessor, but concerns itself, at times, with the bitter truth that, sooner rather than later, he’ll be gone, too.

If you choose to look for the metaphors, there's beauty and even redemption to be found in Now Only; if you don't, there's a kind of quiet acceptance in the numbness.

Whether the waves will have died down enough for him to return to other topics on the next Mount Eerie album is yet to be heard. But, if he does make another album in honour of his deceased wife, he’s proven here that he still has enough love and poetry in him to make it a deeply resonant and worthwhile listen.

Now Only isn’t as easily categorized as its predecessor. These songs arrive with such urgency, such purpose, that it feels all-encompassing: part-memoir, part magnum opus.

There are only six tracks this time out, some of them long, all of them weaving between despair and inner reflection, seeking a route out of the purgatory he's trapped in. It's part two of a painfully vivid window into the grieving process, and like part one, it's brilliant.

Pleasure for the listener is probably moot for a project like this, but Elverum has an instinctive gift for immersive, imagistic arrangements, and it’s wonderful to hear him indulge it again on Now Only.

It occasionally breaks into shocking moments of lo-fi howl, as on the 11 minute “Distortion”, which begins with a juddering, buzzsaw chord. The jumbled and constant flow of imagery emerges every now and then from the tumult of his guitar, so that one pulls the other in a different direction. [May 2018, p.54]

The themes still surround the passing of his wife Geneviève Elverum, but he allows some room to contemplate on what it means to begin to move forward. As opposed to the stiflingly spare Crow, Now Only is fairly more detailed, where he seeks for some equilibrium by revisiting the sullen drones of his past work.

Elverum’s voice’s masculinity-defying diffidence couldn’t be more indie, but his words now add all the weight he needs.

Now Only occasionally treads a fine line between soul bearing catharsis and a vividness so acute it feels disconcertingly intrusive.

Less deadpan and more florid than its predecessor, Now Only is heartrending in new, different ways. Sonically, the record doesn’t stray far from Mount Eerie’s elemental standard operating procedures, where meandering, nylon-strung acoustic strum or heavy metal thunder underlie Elverum’s streams of consciousness.

Like A Crow Looked at Me, Only Now overflows with love, but Elverum never romanticizes death. Instead, he vividly captures the nuances of grief, absurdity, and hope as he and his daughter leave the "blast zone" immediately after Castrée's passing, and that makes Only Now a remarkable portrait of loss--and growth.

Now Only is a messy record, brimming with musical ideas that often drop out before resolving, and with lyrics so factual as to sometimes verge on dull. But in the name of progress, this messiness feels hard-won. You can learn from death, and Elverum proves again that you can make art from it.

While that sense of conviction and commitment remain true in this new release, the six songs presented here are evidence of extending a singular moment into an ongoing musical arc. By persisting with a subject matter that was fleeting, Elverum joins his music to other contexts and considerations that were not pertinent the first time.

The results are almost too intimate to bear. [Jun 2018, p.33]