Phil Elverum has spent much of his career awestruck by the natural world, writing album after album about the soggy majesty of the Pacific Northwest. But at Mount Eerie's latest Toronto show, he took a less romantic look at the same theme, focusing instead on the grim realization that the landscape he worships has been stolen through colonialism and genocide — a message made all the more urgent by the apparent colonial aspirations of the US's current regime.
An opening set from Hana Stretton established the quiet, reverent tone for the night, as she held the crowd hushed with delicate folk soundscapes, her soft strums and unintelligible coos set against the backdrop of twittering pastoral samples.
After an unusually short break between sets, Mount Eerie took the stage in a four-piece configuration, with Elverum stage left, looking grizzled and silly in a kind of bohemian tour costume including flip-flops and baggy cow print pants. Wielding an electric guitar and accompanied by a drummer, bassist and keyboardist, he opened with the foggy, naturalistic drone of "Night Palace," the title track from his 2024 LP.
This was one of many such sound collages heard throughout the night: Elverum and his bandmates created rickety ambience using wooden chimes, recorder, wood blocks, and some sort of a wind instrument that sounded like an atonal harmonica, all while whooshing wind sounds backgrounded the entire set, filling up any moments of silence. This is an artist who has released an album called Wind's Poem, after all.
Elverum was unafraid to test the patience of the near-full Concert Hall, devoting nearly all of the hour-plus set to last year's Night Palace; a goosebumps-raising version of 2008's "Voice in Headphones," complete with an audience singalong of its Björk-borrowing hook, was the only time he dipped into his back catalogue at all. (He called this version "a cover of Mount Eerie.") The spoken word piece "Demolition" was a particularly bold swing, with the meek-voiced Elverum monologuing about a meditation retreat for more than 10 minutes.
The political implications of his world-building came into focus with the churning, electrified "Non-Metaphorical Decolonization" — a song that earned whoops from the crowd when Elverum introduced it, prompting him to add, "I appreciate the enthusiasm for the concept of Land Back." The crowd also saved cheers for the song's quietly scathing verses, as Elverum softly intoned, "This 'America,' the old idea, I want it to die."
It was a night of challenging arrangements and ideas, but fans were clearly along for the ride. When someone behind me in the balcony began chatting to their friend at a normal volume, practically everyone in the section turned around to glare at them.
Close to the end of the night, someone shouted "I love you!" to Elverum, who seemed visibly relieved by the comment. "I was concerned because of how our countries are at war," he said wryly, declaring himself a representative from the US who had come to "squash the beef," and offering to let Canada "absorb most of the United States."
He continued, "Sorry for all of the confusion with all of the assholes we have. But seriously, it sucks. Reality sucks right now. Fuck 'em all." It wasn't quite as vicious as Jack White's anti-Trump rant a couple months earlier, but it was possibly even more radical: a tearing-down not only of the US's administration, but of the country itself, and even of the idea that countries should exist at all.
Reality does indeed suck right now, but Mount Eerie left fans with a reminder that this broken world is the only one we've got. "Here I am back in America," Elverum murmured on the closing "Stone Woman Gives Birth to a Child at Night," reflecting on climate change and his futile attempts to check out from civilization: "I plugged my dead phone back in / The old cacophony rushes in."
It was a heavy sentiment, but hopeful, too; a message of peaceful acceptance, even when it comes to crumbling empires and horrifying news cycles and death itself. As Elverum said when introducing "the Gleam pt. 3" and its story of dementia and the inevitability of death: "Maybe not like 'AHHH!' but more like 'Ahhhh.'"