"A Crow Looked at Me" by Mount Eerie, contributed by Giovani Gomez-Orozco (2025)
This album, to me, gives an insight into a personal death, something I haven’t suffered yet.
Four months after giving birth to her daughter, Geneviève Castrée was diagnosed with cancer, and after a year, she was no longer with us. Her husband, Phil Elverum, was stricken with grief and began to write notes about his pain. Soon, he took his musical talent and notes and started working on this album, making each song in the room where she died with her instruments. His album has a blunt opinion on death; it’s not poetic, beautiful, or a gift. It’s painful and not artistic. “Death is real, Someone's there and then they’re not, And it’s not for singing about, It’s not for making into art, When real death enters the house, all poetry is dumb, When I walk into the room where you were, And look into the emptiness instead, All fails.” A summary of this album is contained in the first song, “Real Death.” The lyrics are deep and personal, almost like a diary left on a park bench. Elverum talks about his daughter, memories of his wife, and the death itself.
This album affords a true look into grief with music. Elverum gives people a chance to say, “Screw learning through death, I want to grieve.” A lost piece of grief, as we are an ever-understanding and growing society. I love this album: Elverum has such a visual writing style that truly makes you feel what he is feeling. I hope someone can listen to this and give themselves time to comprehend their pain and work through it fully.