CD Reviews: Mount Eerie -- 'Clear Moon'

'Clear Moon'
MOUNT EERIE
3 stars

Listening to Phil Elverum, the Washington-based musician once of the Microphones, now of Mount Eerie, it is difficult to avoid natural iconography. His roughly hewn elemental folk has not gentled with age, nor has his affinity for the world and what is in it. The wind, the wave, the tree and mountain, the thunder and crash, the fog, and of course, the clear moon, are all present and accounted for, as is Elverum himself, a player on this earthly stage. Beneath his unhurried inflections on life and living, there is a placid menace to these songs, the feeling of portent that hums and whispers in the deep wilderness, that this could all turn on you in an instant. By the time the title track arrives as a roiling storm of discordant synthesizers and cymbal crashes, the listener almost feels intimidated into humility, as with churches of old. Elverum plans to release yet another album this fall, titled "Ocean's Roar." But one envisions him going further, creating living recordings that one could purchase in their original form and then access online over time, a constantly evolving album that completes the erosions only hinted at here.