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Sep 24, 2018 Web Exclusive By Michael James Hall

Following the release of Phil Elverum’s perfect, poetic eulogy to his late wife, 2017’s A Crow Looked At Me, he embarked on a tour that included not only the first performances of several of those songs but also a second-half preview of what would follow on 2018’s masterful, stoic Now Only.

These shows were remarkable for many reasons—intimate, fragile, and burned through with both absolute despair and an unusual sense of congregation (many of the shows took place in churches)—Elverum performs with naked honesty songs about the immense nature of loss and the prospect of raising his daughter alone.

On (After) we get an unvarnished, untarnished performance from this tour at Holland’s Le Guess Who? festival on November 10th, 2017.

When placed together, the songs from this pair of studio albums create an imperfect jigsaw of black emptiness, knife-point nostalgia, and the possibility of a future having already faced the unthinkable. Elverum’s voice, dulcet, half-whispered, carries like a supernatural but very real force, his arpeggiated acoustic guitar style bringing anthems of loss like “Real Death” and the miraculous “Crow Pt. 2” to life before a silent and immensely respectful audience.

There’s even time for a moment of half-humor on “Now Only,” with its absolutely unexpected chorus, simultaneously one of the darkest moments in modern music but conversely a temptation to sing-along that, thankfully, no one here picks up on.

There’s something necessary about this live record—a further expression of mourning and hope from an artist that has in recent years been able to articulate grief and resilience in the most astounding, human, vulnerable ways. (www.pwelverumandsun.com)

Author rating: 8.5/10