Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron & Fred Squire – Lost Wisdom

For this latest album, Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum is joined by Secretly Canadian songwriter Julie Doiron and guitarist Fred Squire, and there’s a great chemistry between the assembled players. The duetting voices of Elverum and Doiron sound marvellous together, especially in the more intimate moments, such as the loose harmonising of ‘Grave Robbers’ or ‘Flaming Home’. On ‘Voice In Headphones’ there’s a reappropriation of Bjork’s ‘Undo’, which is sung in the background with a choral-like layered sound. In this context, Elverum’s songs might be compared to the recent Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy recordings where Will Oldham’s been joined by accompanists like Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables or Ashley Webber, and with Doiron helping out there’s a much needed reinforcement of Elverum’s songwriting vision, which as tends to be the case with the finest Mount Eerie albums is presented with a starkness and intimacy that’s spine-tinglingly effective.