Words with Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie

The singular force behind Mount Eerie and the Microphones never skimps in his efforts or attention to aesthetic detail—Phil Elverum is prolific. Elverum’s newest release, 'Black Wooden Ceiling Opening', is a foray into dark, heavy music pounded out with the help of Jason Anderson and Kjetil Jenssen of the Spectacle. This creative whirlwind seems to only intensify his production of books, zines, and niche cultural commodities as time goes on.

Gigwise: So there is a real Mount Eerie?
Phil Elverum: “Well, there is but it’s spelled differently—it’s Mount Erie. Mount Eerie with two Es has this meaning of creepy or ominous. It sums up this vibe that I go for with a lot of the stuff I make.”

Mount Eerie has recently taken on a black-metal look. Is that just aesthetic preference or a sincere interest in Northern culture?
“Yeah, I have been getting into black metal in the last couple of years. There’s this absurdity in it—these angry teenagers who live with their parents. I’m really into the aesthetic—this really dark form of nature appreciation.”

Nature appreciation?
“It’s difficult to write and do creative work about “nature appreciation” without being pigeonholed into the previous forms that nature writing has existed in. For example, I could be a “hippie” or a “conservationist.” I really like this new dark, almost spiritual, but fundamentally non-religious belief—basically all these black-metal dudes, these suburban teenagers have figured out that there’s something powerful about going on a walk in the forest by yourself at night.”

Can you talk about the writer and environmentalist Gary Snyder, who you’ve quoted in the liner notes of your records?
“I read Gary Snyder and think, 'Yeah, he put into words how I feel, too!” But it’s tricky. Every time I read a review of my music or get talked about people seem to say, 'I’m really into your music—I’m into nature, too!' And I’m like, Really? It seems kind of shallow—like, 'Yeah, I like camping.'

"That’s what I’m talking about when I say it’s difficult to talk about nature to the accurate depths of my feeling about it.  Gary Snyder looks at nature as the world we live in—the Wal-Mart parking lot is nature. Also in terms of time—he goes back to primitive times and says, Hey, it’s not primitive and modern. It’s about a sense of character—how do you go through with your life in the present moment? What are your values, regardless of the era you were born into?"

What values do you want to express other than an appreciation of nature?
"An awareness of one’s surroundings. Being receptive to the moment. But that’s not the main thrust of what I’m interested in saying.

"'Green' is a brand now. It’s a commodity. I want to remove the artificial distinction between like, here I am, and over there is nature. It’s this place where we have to go and we’ve got to drive there and go to the Yosemite parking lot and bring an energy bar, go up the trail and be like, 'Ok, so here’s where I appreciate this.'  Taking it away from that and being like: No. Every day you wake up in your bed and you go make coffee in the kitchen. There are these natural phenomena going on around us all the time."

So you went and lived in a cabin in Norway for the winter?
"Yeah. I went there for ultimate solitude. I kept this journal that someone is publishing as a book with a CD in November. It’s basically me just walking around thinking and talking to myself. It was great. The pace of living was way down there in a way that’s really hard to get in normal life when you have distractions and actual tasks."

Did you get a lot of work done in Norway, or was it consumed by the task of just surviving?
"It was empty there. Here, in the real world, you’re consumed with tasks. There, I had a lot of chores to do, like gathering wood, making food, and keeping the cabin warm, but I could do it at my own pace."

What prompted you to go live a season in the wilderness?
"The original idea was that I was going to move there and never come back. It’s kind of like how a lot of people said, “Oh god! If George W. Bush gets elected I’m totally moving to Canada.” I don’t know if people said that where you live, but it was a little bit of that. “Oh god, this country’s crazy, I’m going to see what it’s like to live somewhere else.” I lived there for five months, and that was enough to realize that it didn’t feel like home."

Solitude must have a big draw for you?
"It did. It was a strange period in my life where I didn’t quite know why I was doing it. But in hindsight it was me drawing the border between the first part of my life and the second. It was why I started calling my project Mount Eerie. I moved back to Anacortes from Olympia. I felt kind of like an adult, you know? I’m a little more mature."

What do you want your relationship between your art and commerce to be?
"I have this attention to aesthetic detail when I’m doing things that I really don’t want to let go of. I only play all-ages shows. I don’t like playing bars, even if they’re all-ages. Those things tend to get lost, I think, with my friends that become commercially successful. Because the way they do things is, you have to get a booking agent, and the booking agent doesn’t want to find weird places; they just want to call up the guy at the bar where they always book shows, where it’s easy. I think that I’m as famous as I want to be."

I read in another interview that you said you feel like you’re 'making ephemeral art objects at the end of a dying empire.'
"I always kind of feel like the record I’m putting out could be the last one because any day now, the economy’s going to crumble and we won’t be able to drive our cars next week. I’ve got a pretty apocalyptic view of things but I’m still doing my thing. Which I guess is maybe not the most responsible view of impending apocalypse. But I guess I don’t know how to do anything else. I think the way I live now is getting there. I know my farmers, and have a farm share where I get my food. I’m kissing up to them so when the time comes, they’ll let me into the compound. I grew up in the woods outside of town with wood heat and kerosene. I’m not worried. Plus, I live in this place that is still really wild and lush with lots of edible food. I think I’m pretty well positioned."