Mount Eerie: "To the Ground"

Phil Elverum is one of those musicians that I sometimes, in the face of so much buzz-building and comeback-celebrating, forget is out there. Formerly as the (beloved) Microphones, and currently as the more experimental Mount Eerie, Elverum avoids music press scrutiny partially because of his near-pathological work ethic: he never goes away. Since 1998, he’s been producing one, sometimes multiple records a year, playing around with different genres, collaborators, and album formats. This is the behavior not of a workhorse, but of someone who loves the simple act of writing and recording, of exploring—his is a playful sensibility, and it comes through in his songs.

“To the Ground” is a limited edition Mount Eerie 7”, not to be featured on the upcoming record Clear Moon, but it certainly doesn’t sound like cutting room floor material. It starts out sparse, with bongos and Elverum’s sleepy-toned admission that “It was all a dream.” But then the organ kicks in, along with ethereal backing vocals, turning a low-key track into something of a hymn—a little Sufjan -y, but warmer, and without the extra flourish. Elverum sings of sleep, earth, mountains, and weather in halting lines like “I came out / from beneath / earth blanket / in the form / of a person awoken.” When the handclaps come in toward the end, the song seems to fully emerge from its self-imposed slumber.

In the avalanche of Phil Elverum tracks to come this year (Clear Moon, and later in the year, Ocean Roar), a one-off like “To the Ground” can be easily buried. But when dealing with someone so prolific, sometimes it’s important to stop and listen to four-and-a-half-minute beauties like this one, lest we take them for granted.