Sauna - Mount Eerie (a real-time review)

I have written out my thoughts while listening to the album for the first time. The writing has been edited only for spelling:

Sauna begins in much the same way many of Phil Elvrum’s works have - with quiet ambiance: organ, environmental sounds, breath. I feel like something ominous is lurking, though. Passing dissonances creep up periodically. A distorted guitar passes through. And before you know it, the familiar tenor of Phil Elverum coalesces everything into a song form. Cymbals in stereo - left to right. Acoustic guitar harmonies similarly effected. Female-voiced counterpoint. Wait, am I hearing a Microphones record? The nostalgia is building. Then “Sauna” the song ends. “Turmoil” begins with adolescent eighth-note rhythms. “Dragon,” with it’s beautiful homophonic female leads, minimal acoustic accompaniment, and gradually building noise rambles through. The nostalgia is at what must be its peak. Of course, distorted cymbals and backwards tape appears next with “Emptiness.” Overload. The amazing bass line here is maybe the first thing that’s more indicative of Mount Eerie’s mature recordings than the Microphones’ beautiful soundscapes. The marimba phase in “(something)” similarly reminds one of Wind’s Poem even as it clearly owes certain debts to Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase” (performed spectacularly on marimba by The Proper Glue Duo). Noisy “Boat” fulfills the role of “Samurai Sword” - cleansing the palette. But this draws me in much more than the later. The bent-string riff is fantastic. Crazy transition right into “Planet.” The mix of the heavy with the beautiful. “Pumpkin” announces itself as an acoustic ballad with ever-changing textural backgrounds. I am reminded of what I think is “Eric’s Trip.” “The Glow” too. Perhaps. The synth appears and carries with it the most transcendent moments of Wind’s Poem. “Spring” is something entirely different - controlled noise almost in the Varese vein (think “Poeme Electonique”). Electric guitars enter after the attack and disappear before the decay. The stereo imagery is superb. The ambling feedback mixes with the sound of a distant train outside of my window. Chills. Haunting, minor and diminished organ announces that Phil and crew are not done with us. Cold, perfect-interval harmonies (also reminiscent of Reich) draw us toward the inevitable warm respite of the drum beat, which itself flings us toward more unsettling guitar feedback. Multiple serialist-like keyboard passages layer on top of one another like poly-rhythms. Multiple Phils drone in the eventual quietude. I’ve just now caught by breath. What I thought was going to be a “(something)”-like interlude has transformed into one of the great achievements in the P.W. Elverum catalog. The almost comical electonicism and phasing of prepared piano(?) in “Books” gives a hypnotic ease until the rhythmic complexity not unlike that found in Conlon Nancarrow’s works for player piano shock us. The dense, rapid-fire layering of voices (or is it woodwinds?) with organ and the like in “This” is likewise new and exciting. The stereo-treated acoustic backing track of “Youth,” Sauna‘s final track has led to the first hint of nostalgia in some time, but its electronic tinges and heavy middle passage marks yet another new textural mixture. The ending vocal lines, like always, are devastatingly uplifting.

It is done, and I know not yet what to make of it. Looking back, I find references to three 20th-century composers (five if you count the prepared piano as a John Cage reference and serialism as an Arnold Schoenberg reference), which may indicate that Sauna is Phil’s most mature work. But, then again, maybe the reviewer was just finding what he was looking for. I will give no numerical value at this time. Please listen though.