by Mount Eerie
Released March 24, 2017 via P. W. Elverum & Sun Ltd.
Reviewed March 16, 2022
Top tracks (based on community voting)
Real Death (75%), Seaweed (41%), Ravens (41%)
A Crow Looked At Me is one of the most hauntingly stark depictions of loss ever put to music. It’s even hard to call it music; it is more like spoken word with light acoustic elements to keep it afloat. Gut wrenching stories are presented with a blunt nature that pulls no punches; it truly encapsulates the first stages of grief without bringing attention to itself. Tiny intricacies are what make this record, like the way Phil wraps a story that’s been going on for months, or how he portrays the things we would never think about without having someone experience the trauma; such as an Amazon package arriving with what was supposed to be a happy item, now only to bring misery. – Jared (9/10)
Grief has no rhyme or reason. It plays on all human emotions and it doesn't discriminate. Stripped to its bare bones, A Crow Looked At Me is a harrowing account of the loss of a loved one. The entanglement of our experiences comes undone in a moment. Memories play an integral part in our experience of this thing we call life. These memories ever so slowly decay to exist in a state of remembering a memory, falling off of themselves into the ether, windswept to a point of ambiguity. Phil Elverum produced a one-of-a-kind album in A Crow Looked At Me. The tenderness of the musicianship amidst the unforgiving recall of everyday happenings places it upon a pedestal of heartbreaking quality. Songs of the soul require deep reflection to soar. – Peter (8/10)
The harrowing muse of Phil Elverum’s eighth album as Mount Eerie carries an unforgettable tone of shellshock and emotional suspension amidst a state of grief. In many ways, A Crow Looked At Me redefines the songwriting and album recording process. Strikingly, the lyrical face of the record is nearly biographical, or even expository, in its approach. General simplicity, raw filter, and blunt edge on every lyric, Elverum’s account of living on after the loss of his spouse—the mother of their young daughter—feels to write itself. In the ways life sometimes deals us a fate we’d never dream of on our own, this singer/songwriter feels completely guided by the shock of the reality he is faced with, thus the need for poetic embellishment is deeply minimized. The most important takeaway from the album is the purpose A Crow Looked At Me fulfills for a lifelong musician, losing another musician they love on a familial, nuclear level. Naturally, it’s a record that is imperfect and unfit for the typical modes of music consumption; however, this is what leaves an album like this profoundly in a world of its own. – DeVán (7.5/10)
Hadley: 10/10 | Alan: 9.3/10 | Dominick: 9/10
Jared: 9/10 | Peter: 8/10 | DeVán: 7.5/10
