A Crow Looked at Me is the eighth studio album by Mount Eerie, a solo project of the American musician Phil Elverum. Released in 2017, it was composed in the aftermath of his wife Geneviève Castrée's diagnosis with pancreatic cancer in 2015, and her death in July 2016. Elverum wrote and recorded the songs over a six-week period in the room where she died, mostly using her instruments. His sparse lyrics and minimalistic musical accompaniment drew influence from artists including the poet Gary Snyder, author Karl Ove Knausgård and songwriter Julie Doiron.
Characterized by lo-fi production and loose instrumentation, A Crow Looked at Me departs from Elverum's earlier and more complex experimental works, but is musically similar to his album Lost Wisdom (2008). The lyrics are presented in a diary-like form and sung in a raw, intimate style. They describe Castrée's illness and death, Elverum's grief, and his relationship with their infant child. The album was deliberately underpromoted, and he at first considered releasing the songs under a name other than Mount Eerie. The singles "Real Death" (January 2017) and "Ravens" (February), were accompanied by a single low key concert. After its release, he undertook well-received tours of North America and Europe, and in 2018 released the album (after), a live performance of the songs.
The album is highly regarded by both critics and fans, although a number of critics found it difficult to objectively review, given its emotional subject matter and unflinchingly honest lyrics. A Crow Looked at Me is Elverum's best-selling record and is considered among his most important works. It became one of the most praised albums of 2017, appearing on many best-of lists for the year and decade. His following albums, Now Only (2018) and Lost Wisdom pt. 2 (2019), further detail and examine Castrée's illness and death.
Background
Phil Elverum's wife, the Canadian cartoonist and musician Geneviève Castrée, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015, four months after the birth of their first child. She died at their home in Anacortes, Washington, on July 9, 2016. Elverum considered retiring from music to become a full-time father, but a visit to the Canadian island Haida Gwaii—a place that Elverum and Castrée considered moving to—inspired him to write notes that, along with those he had written during her illness, became the lyrical basis for A Crow Looked at Me.
Inspired by Gary Snyder's poem "Go Now", Elverum realized that he did not have to take meaning from Castrée's death, and could write frank songs that bluntly describe her illness and his experience. Having read the poem months before Castrée's diagnosis, he found it "stayed with [him] subconsciously throughout the 14 months of transformative cancer horror".
Elverum found further inspiration in the works of Canadian singer-songwriter Julie Doiron, American poet Joanne Kyger, American rock band Sun Kil Moon, and Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård. Will Oldham's 1996 album Arise Therefore influenced the sparse production style. Elverum chose the title A Crow Looked at Me to represent the "uncomfortable feeling of applying significance to insignificant things".
Composition and recording Elverum wrote and recorded the album between August 31 and December 6, 2016, at his house in Anacortes, Washington, in the room Castrée had died, and for which he credits the album's "immediacy" and "bluntness". He had earlier abandoned the room, opening its window to allow the weather, birds, and nature to take over. He reclaimed the room out of a need for a private space to work when not parenting. In an interview with KUOW, he said that he wanted to create positive associations with the room so that it would not be defined solely by Castrée's final days. He used a single microphone, an acoustic guitar, and some of Castrée's instruments. His decision was out of practicality, rather than from any intentional symbolic significance. The album was recorded onto a laptop computer, making A Crow Looked at Me his first album to be produced entirely in this way—he had before mostly used analog recording.
Elverum began the recording sessions after his daughter fell asleep or was visiting friends. In notes accompanying the album's release, he wrote that the songs "poured out quickly in the fall" while he was "watching the days grey over and watching the neighbors across the alley tear down and rebuild their house". He described writing lyrics on paper and then practicing until he had memorized each chord sequence—a first for him. He said that most of his initial songwriting notes took the form of a "formless, no-rhythm, no-meter, no-melody blob of words". This process was a result of habit, "just doing what I usually do", which was "to distil all the mass of words in my head into something a little more poetic and musical". Elverum intended the songs to have a "hyper-intimate" and unrestrained quality and to be philosophical but devoid of metaphor, which he felt would be "cowardly and pointless".
Elverum was compelled to make the album having found that works of art he once had treasured were ineffective in helping him cope with her illness and death. Even while writing the album, he remained unsure whether anyone except himself would ever hear it, and he had no goal in mind. He completed and released the record to "[open] up all the way", to make the intensity of his love for Castrée known, and to draw a distinction between art and the "experience of life". Elverum said the style of songwriting he used was the only kind that felt "appropriate" and "real" to him. He found the album's creation therapeutic and felt as though he were "hanging out" with Castrée during its production; by the end of the process, he felt he had partially healed. In an interview a year after the album's creation, he expressed disbelief that he had been able to make an album under the circumstances.
Cover artwork The album cover consists of a photograph of Castrée's former art studio. The image captures a number of her personal items, including a blurry but recognizable copy of Hergé's 1960 graphic novel Tintin in Tibet. Stereogum writer Patrick Lyons speculated that the comic's appearance served as a connection to Elverum's following album, Now Only, which has a song titled "Tintin in Tibet". The photograph shows Elverum's hand holding a piece of paper with the poem "Night Palace" by Castrée's close friend Joanne Kyger. The poem had been important to Castrée, who pinned the paper above her desk years before her cancer diagnosis. Elverum chose to use it because he felt it encapsulated the album's themes, his grieving process and the manner in which he wished to perform the songs.
Music and lyrics
The lyrics are written in a style of poetic literalism with a sense of mysticism. Their main themes are Castrée's illness and death as well as Elverum's grief. Ideas of impermanence, emptiness, disorientation, and the absurdity of performing intimate material in public are present as well. Pastes Matt Fink suggested that although Elverum's repertoire of songs about mortality is perhaps second only to those about nature, A Crow Looked at Me "marks the first time he has written about death".
The work's exploration of death has been compared to the Antlers' Hospice (2009), David Bowie's Blackstar (2016) and Sufjan Stevens's Carrie & Lowell (2015), although, as highlighted by writer Isabel Zacharias, A Crow Looked at Me focuses more on the grieving process and its mundane aspects than these albums do. Many of the lyrics reference nature. One reviewer said that "tragedy hasn't stopped [Elverum] from noticing the world; if anything, it seems to have pried his eyes open for good". Unlike in his past works, he forgoes his "general focus on nature's 'raw impermanence. Throughout, Elverum returns to motifs such as his house—in particular, the room where Castrée died—and the minutiae of his life.
The lyrics are written in diary form and detail actual events and dates. Each song explores a specific period during his grieving process, and according to Elverum, are "anchored to a very specific moment". Thomas Britt of PopMatters highlighted this element, writing that the approach made real the impact of death on continuing, everyday life. With the exception of the final track, "Crow"—which is addressed to the couple's daughter, whose role in the album's story is almost that of a second protagonist—the songs refer to Castrée, although she is never directly named. Elverum said that he does not view the album as a tribute to Castrée, or about her. He believes that he would be unable to create a sufficient tribute for Castrée. At times Elverum uses dark humor. According to The New Yorker Peter Baker, the lyrics combine "emotional intimacy and tonal frankness to a degree rarely heard in contemporary music". The Guardian Brigid Delaney wrote that the album is more comparable to "a traditional lament" than popular pieces of music about death such as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Skeleton Tree. The New York Times Jon Caramanica wrote that "songwriting seems almost too precise a term" because "the line is blurred between singing, speaking and raw emotional data dump".
The music is reminiscent of his 2008 albums Dawn and Lost Wisdom; its songs avoid standard musical structures and have sparse instrumentation—individual instruments enter and leave at unpredictable times—a drum machine producing a hiss-like sound, acoustic guitar, chord changes, an absence of choruses, unorthodox verse structure, and very few melodies. The songs are short—lasting on average less than four minutes—and typically end abruptly, avoiding codas and fade outs. They include unresolved notes and chords; the ending of "Seaweed", for example, hangs on a half-step descent. The simplicity of the songs reflects Elverum's wish to move away from his earlier, more "artistically challenging" work, which is characterized by "harsh tones" and "complicated chords". Jayson Greene of Pitchfork explained the contrast to Elverum's earlier work as similar to "the difference between charting a voyage around the earth and undertaking it". Elverum has described A Crow Looked at Me as "barely music".
Tracks 1–7
The opening track "Real Death" describes Elverum's shock in the weeks after Castrée's death. He sings accompanied by piano, electric guitar, accordion and drums. The opening words, "Death is Real", reappear throughout the record. The lyrics set out that the album is not intended as an artistic statement about death: "it's not for singing about / It's not for making into art". Elverum has said that although the album is art, the line is about "the difference between the idea of a thing and the actual lived experience of it", and that this line is an example of him "joking around".
In "Seaweed", Elverum describes the scattering of Castrée's ashes, his trip to Haida Gwaii with their daughter a month after Castrée's death, and his fear of forgetting the small details of Castrée's life. He concludes the song by saying that he thinks of Castrée as the sunset. "Ravens", which is accompanied by multi-tracked guitar, piano chords and percussion, describes Castrée's last living days and the moments after. He has expressed regret over repeatedly describing and singing about her final days, instead wishing he could forget them.
"Forest Fire" explores themes of death, decay, and the seeming absurdity of life. In the song, Elverum describes his daily routine. The fire represents a sort of "cleansing", but it is unclear what is being made pure. In the song, he writes that he "rejects nature"; he has said that the line is both an acknowledgement of the natural process of death and a protest against it, rather than outright rejection. "Swims" details his experience of grief counseling and the sudden death of his counselor; his vocals are accompanied by a minimal guitar line and simple piano chords.