When real death enters the house, all poetry is dumb

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2017.

#47 : A Crow Looked At Me - Mount Eerie

The most recent album by Washington musician Phil Elverum is a shattering account of the death of his wife, illustrator-musician Geneviève Castrée. Devastatingly direct in its portrayal of the minutiae of loss, Elverum relays – over plainly plucked guitar – difficult conversations with their one-year-old daughter and tormented memories of discarding his wife’s clothes. It isn’t an easy listen, but Elverum conveys his grief with starkness and potency.

Well, this sounds like it might be hard-going...

Yeah, I think we can pretty much say that. The whole thing is basically him idly strumming his guitar (it's not a work of musical complexity) whilst he relates thoughts or activities which are in some way related to his wife's death, which happened a month before he started recording. And, whilst I've absolutely no clue what that must have been like for him, it certainly feels like he's being 100% honest here - some of the lyrics are extremely poetic and poignant, whilst some make no sense but they still feel like they must have some relevance to him. I can imagine that it would chime with others who have been through similar experiences, but I can also imagine it might just be completely unlistenable in its rawness. I won't be revisiting it, but I appreciate his honesty and hope it helped him in what must have been a dreadful situation.

Not only do we have a Wikipedia entry, but it's huge (343 milliPeppers) making it one of the biggest of the year. It tells us it's his eighth album as Mount Eerie (he was also the only constant member of The Microphones) and not only did he record this soon after his wife's death, but he also did it in the room that she died in - man, he was putting the pressure on himself. A lot of the entry is a tough read but it's consistent with the album with some nice touches and a whole load of "what's the point to it all?". I liked the fact that he "chose the title A Crow Looked at Me to represent the "uncomfortable feeling of applying significance to insignificant things"" - this ties in very nicely with a lot of the album lyrics.

Critically, it was very well received, although several people noted it was hard to be objective "given its emotional subject matter and unflinchingly honest lyrics". It made a load of year-end lists and a load of random other musicians raised it as an example that had helped them cope with stuff - interestingly the legacy section tells us that he needed a couple more albums to work through his grief, but a year later he said that "no longer fully related to the grief expressed on the album" and he realised "that everyone is much kinder and more mature than [he] expected", which gave me a nice feeling. There was, however, no danger of it charting anywhere.

discogs.com has one copy available for £30 - take it or leave it! This is an interesting album because I'm not sure it really counts as "music" (whatever that is) and there's absolutely no danger of me listening to it again. However, it's honest, brave, poetic, <insert similar words as appropriate as required> - I'd say it's a very impressive piece of art, which also doubles as therapy.

#46 : République Amazone - Les Amazones d’Afrique

This all-female, gender-equality-focused Malian supergroup features Mariam (of Amadou and Mariam fame) alongside 11 other west African musicians. Their debut sees them take turns on vocal duties, with producer Liam Farrell weaving future-facing dub, electronica and R&B into traditional African sounds along the way.

Well, I wouldn't generally have approached this with much expectation, but we've already had one enjoyable African fusion offering on the list - so you never know...

Hmmm - no. I actually didn't mind the African elements here - it's a load of women with great voices making some interesting sounds and harmonies. But the fusion elements are clumsy at best - at times it feels like <woman X> sung her piece and then the producer just threw whatever he had lying around the studio at it and they just don't go together at all. Trio Da Kali and Kronos Quartet really gave you the impression they worked with and bounced ideas off each other creating something that would appeal to everyone and that is, sadly, all very lacking here - with the notable exceptions of "Wedding" and "Kounani" which actually work quite well, but it all comes a little too late, I'm afraid.

Wikipedia has an entry for the group which basically says they exist and they've released three albums, with this being the first - surprisingly, one of them has minorly charted here, but this wasn't the one. 

discogs.com surprises me by telling me that there's a turquoise vinyl version available and you can pick it up for £17.50 - that seems like a bargain! Except that I've no desire to listen to this again, thank you.

#45 : The Lost Art of Getting Down - Powerdance

DJ Luke Solomon is the brains behind the collective Powerdance, which also counts Hot Chip’s Al Doyle among its members. Their aim: inject fun and flamboyance back into dance music. Inspired by the queer club scene, the Lost Art of Getting Down is a funk and disco-suffused slice of retro ebullience.

This sounds like it will either be a load of fun or fantastically over the top - let's see what we've got, shall we?

Hmm - it falls somewhere in between the two. It is fun, but not loads thereof and it is over the top, but not fantastically so. It's all well put together but it is a bit James Brown's Ministry of Compulsory Good Times - which I have a slight aversion to, so it makes me all a bit "no, actually I don't want to funk, thank you". It's also a bit repetitive and samey across a whole album for me, but if you like a bit of disco-jazz-funk, then you'll probably like this. 

Wikipedia has no entry for either the album or for the "musical collective" and they've never charted - that makes this section somewhat short, doesn't it? Even Google AI comes up pretty short, except for telling us that they released a second album last year. I'm actually quite surprised there are physical copies for discogs.com to provide me with, but you can spend anything from £8 to £20 on a vinyl copy. I guess this album does what it was intended to do - but it's not really aimed at me.

Three very different albums indeed in this round - Mount Eerie is easily the least impressive one musically but I think it has to be the winner for the searing honesty on display and I've very glad he got some good out of it.

#50-48 - A decent start to another list