Lost Wisdom

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Sample Album
ALBUM INFORMATION

Total Tracks: 10   Total Length: 24:34

eMusic Review

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Yancey Strickler

eMusic Contributor

10.07.08
A Microphone and a Wooden Star get together
2008 | Label: P.W. Elverum & Sun / Iris

This collaboration between Julie Doiron, once of Wooden Stars and Eric's Trip, and Phil Elvrum, the man behind Mount Eerie and the Microphones, was pre-ordained eight years ago, when Elvrum covered a beautiful little sigh of a song written by Eric's Trip called "Sand" on It Was Hot We Stayed in the Water. Doiron and Elvrum — and Fred Squire, who guests here, too — approach music similarly: with complete humility and timidity. As would be expected, Lost Wisdom is a very hushed album in every respect, making it more of an heir to The Glow Pt. 2, Elvrum's masterpiece, than to any of the often strident disappointments that followed it. I can't say that Lost Wisdom is a great album, but it's far better than we've come to expect from Elvrum in recent years.

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I thought you'd be as big as a whale

undergroundesigns

"O My Heart" wrecks me every time.

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everybody robs graves

drob842

Favorite acoustic album that I own.

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Beautiful

Scagden

I've used emusic for years and this is the first time I've felt compelled to review anything. I must have downloaded 1000s of tracks and this is definitely the best album I have come across. Unlike many Microphones records this album pares the songs down to the absolute minimum and lets the twin vocals entwine over the simplest guitar acoompaniment. The songs are short, but each will stay with you long after the track ends.

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Hoofprints on my heart

Travage

Hoofprints, I want to help you. I would like to tell you that Phil is not your typical musician. I have many music loving friends that don't choose to listen to his catalogue, but that isn't any reason to contemplate self inflicted death or pain. Simply walk away. As for the music, this one is a nice addition to the afore mentioned catalogue. The formula that works so well for the Microphones of analog, low budget recording works well here. Plus the lyrics hold a sense that the two vocalists are holed up in a cabin during the fiercest of winters. If you like the Microphones a ton, like me, you will love this. You wont get the layers of instrumentation and upbeat numbers that pepper the usual Microphones albums- but you will get an album filled with introspective words to get you through the gray of winter.

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If you are Out of Heroin try this

Hoofprints

If you cant shoot yourself, have nothing to overdose on,cant get an appointment for a root canal, or wanna see what its like to pass out from boredom, try this disc. This really blows.

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best mount eerie i've heard in many moons.

sdenton

Perhaps its the influence of the additional artists on the album, maybe the stars just came back into alignment. But in any case, this album contains some of the best work from Mount Eerie since, well, Mount Eerie. The first track is my favorite thus far; check it out for a taste of what follows.

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They Say All Media Guide

The searching, noisy-then-delicate music of Eric’s Trip had a big impact on Phil Elverum’s work in the Microphones and Mount Eerie, so this collaboration with Eric’s Trip and Broken Girl singer Julie Doiron and guitarist Fred Squire is inspired, if only because it makes the connection between Elverum and Doiron’s music even stronger. Though Lost Wisdom came together during some downtime for the three musicians, its simplicity and immediacy sound intimate instead of tossed off. This is the spare, somber, introspective side of Mount Eerie, with just the barest hints of Squire’s guitar adorning Elverum and Doiron’s voices. Doiron’s singing, both with Eric’s Trip and Broken Girl, has always been uniquely lovely and vulnerable, and Elverum uses her as perfectly as he has Mirah, the Blow’s Khaela Maricich, and Woelv’s Geneviève Castrée on other projects. He and Doiron sound completely natural yet haunting trading verses and harmonies on “Lost Wisdom” and “Grave Robbers” — both of their voices, and the music that surrounds them, have a deceptively fragile urgency that barely rises above a whisper for most of the album. Even the album’s loudest moment, “Voice in Headphones” (which, along with “What?,” could pass for one of the bonus tracks on the deluxe version of the Microphones’ The Glow, Pt. 2), still fits with the rest of Lost Wisdom’s delicacy and directness. That simplicity applies to Elverum’s songwriting as well; his imagery becomes more tangible with the years, getting to deeper truths about love, death, and rebirth without getting too tangled in words: it doesn’t get much more direct than “You Swan Go On”‘s “With your hand down my throat/You held on to my heart/And pumped the blood through.” “If We Knew…” is a sweet song about aging, love, and marriage that doesn’t sound sappy, while a warm glow turns into a destructive fire on “Flaming Home.” Mount Eerie take many forms and sounds, showing how comfortable Elverum is with just a room and a guitar or a large cast of players performing his songs; Lost Wisdom is a small-scale gem that shows off his (and Doiron’s) gifts to their finest. – Heather Phares

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