#Geneviève Castrée

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

That poem was on the cover of my album A Crow Looked at Me, for very personal reasons. My wife who died, Geneviève, had a postcard with that poem letter-pressed on it tacked to the wall in her studio. I don’t even know where she got it. She was pen-pals with Joanne, she wrote to her… They were even working on a long-form zine together. It was going to be called Old People (Joanne hated the name). Geneviève had the idea of publishing an interview zine, focusing on older working artists that were still engaged in craft. We drove down to Bolinas and saw Joanne the last few years of her life. Anyway, I was cleaning out Geneviève’s studio after she died, some months after, and that poem was on the wall. It struck me as being relevant to what was happening. Life and death, posterity, present and the past. I took a picture and used it as the album cover. Years later, I realized it: Oh, weird, that album has this other title on the cover. It has this title, Night Palace on it, as a second title. Maybe I need to make an album called Night Palace to use up that seed that has been planted. It’s not even about that poem resonating beyond that one record, it’s those words, “Night Palace,” they’re so resonant and powerful. There’s a lot to be explored there. That’s the zone I’ve been in the last few years. I’m not exactly sure what this is, this “Night Palace” thing—or this like “Mount Eerie” thing. These different, resonant words that have a feeling; it’s distinct to me but isn’t easily articulated. That’s my art process, trying to articulate this thing that feels big and important to me. But you asked how I got into Joanne Kyger! I’m into her scene of poets. Late Beats, the Californian, back-to-the-land poets: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch. The countercultural movement of the 60’s and 70’s, and the Pacific Northwest contingent. I remember being a kid and seeing these older poets around and knowing this cool thing was happening. It does feel personal to me. In a way, it’s part of my lineage.

Phil Elverum

[mywifeleftme]

15: Ô Paon // Fleuve

Fleuve Ô Paon 2015, Disques Ô Paon (Bandcamp)

Geneviève Castrée (Ô Paon) made her reputation as a cartoonist. Her 2012 memoir Susceptible was warmly reviewed in comics circles and, after her death at age 35, leading indie press Drawn & Quarterly published a lavish volume of her collected art. Though the cult of her work remains niche, it continues to grow thanks to the efforts of those who loved her (most notably her husband, Phil Elverum of The Microphones/Mount Eerie).

Though her music tends to be overshadowed by her comics, Castrée was also prolific as a musician. She used a variety of monikers, of which Ô Paon (trans. O Peacock) was the last and most frequent. She didn’t draw a line between the forms, releasing a number of combination books/albums including 2004’s Pamplemoussi (under her own name) and 2007’s Tout Seul dans la Foret en Plein Jour, Avez​-​Vous Peur? as Woelv. Hers was a stark, outsider sound, minimally arranged and rather amelodic. She sang in her native Québécois French in a high, almost piping voice. Accompanying herself on a clean, tensely picked electric guitar, Castrée planted herself at an intersection between drone, folk, and perhaps choral music, and rarely strayed from it.

Fleuve in particular evokes ice floating down a black river, windburned cheeks, a child singing quietly to herself after dark. It isn’t overtly sinister, but it is often unsettling in the same ways her comics could be—to whit, the sleeve illustration seems to depict a boyish child fleeing across a frozen body of water from a crack in which nine identical black-haired heads (resembling Castrée’s self-portraits) bob just above the surface. (This might be the place to note that Castrée was actually a long-time pen name, meaning “castrated.”) The lyrics are loose and imagistic. There are scenes of hitchhiking and car accidents on the barren highway between Montréal and Québec City; oblique evocations of violence and sexual awakening; moments of surreal political satire. It’s all juxtaposed with the elemental flow of water and the seasons, an endless return.

Fleuve is the most fully-realized recording in her catalogue, thanks to its excellent production and expanded instrumental palette. Castrée and collaborator Gus Franklin fill out her skeletal compositions with entrancing organ, mellotron and synth accents that move away from her bedroom roots into a more open world. Cellist Lori Goldston, a session ace known for her work with Nirvana and Earth among others, also drops in to lend her instrument’s solemn buzzing throat to the proceedings.

There’s little light to be found in the circumstances of her demise, but Castrée’s intense productivity leaves us with a considerable body of work—of which Fleuve should be considered an integral part.

15/365

[buellerismyfriend]

Geneviève Castrée

[c-kiddo]

Hello! I really like your art! And also, I started listening to Mount Eerie because you seemed really enthusiastic about them and you seemed like a really cool person so I thought I’d also like them, and I do actually. I’m sorry to see that you’re going through a burnout. Me too (burnout buddies :D /hj), I hope you feel better soon!

thankyou :'-) ! oh aw , thats super cool , glad u like his work and im glad people end up listening because its nice to connect about that kind of thing, especially bc his work for whatever reasons connects with me so deeply. like, yea. he gets it he gets it

i hope you feel bettter soon too 🐦‍⬛

[scrapfungus]

#Geneviève Castrée Woelv and music, and unfinished book, A crow looked at me, drawn & quarterly showcase 3

[dustedmagazine]

Black Belt Eagle Scout—The Land, the Sea, the Sky (Saddle Creek)

Photo by Nate Lemuel

The Land, The Water, The Sky by Black Belt Eagle Scout

Katherine Paul taps a deep connection to native American traditions in this third full-length, weaving landscapes and lore into songs the artist wrote while retreating homeward to Swinomish tribal lands during the pandemic. Yet while Paul is grounded in, as the title says, The Land, the Sea, the Sky, they mostly eschew obvious sonic references to an indigenous heritage. These songs blister and spiral and swirl in early 21st century guitar-centric, indie-fashion.

Consider, for instance, “My Blood Runs Through This Land,” whose white-noise clouds of distorted guitar part for radiant dream-pop descants and reverb-thundering drums. The touchstones are obliterating shoegaze of the MBV variety layered over with Cocteau Twins-ish incantations. It rocks pretty hard, though in an inchoate, vision-haunted way, as does “Sedna,” a song about a mythical ancestor who sacrifices her fingers to bring the ocean’s bounty to her people.

“Sčičudᶻ (a narrow place)” is gentler, more translucent, its title taken from an island connected to the mainland by a thin strip of land near Paul’s tribal home. The lyrics run more confessional, however; a lover observes the loved one dancing. Paul sings in a whispery soprano, flickering, but all the sounds around them are bold and clean—a thunderous bassline, an arching long-noted guitar solo, the pummeling of definitely-not-tribal drums.

“Fancy Dance” is maybe the live highlight, a song that imagines a Swinomish girl dancing furiously at a tribal gathering. It finds the throughline between that girl and the rebels of punk and Riot Grrrl, celebrating the pounding, bouncing, obliterating exhilaration of loud music in any culture.

Paul invites fellow Phil Elverum to sing a few lines in “Salmon Stinta,” a lovely, temperate outing framed by muttering guitars, wavering, hard-to-pin down synth vibrations and breathy vocals. (Paul was close to Elverum’s now deceased wife Geneviève Castrée .) The two of them join in gentle, wordless “ba-bahs” and then Elverum shyly picks up the narrative of fish returning home to breed.

“Spaces,” near the disc’s end is similarly soft and serene, filled out with interweaving string parts, though flaring, at intervals with wild slides of guitar. It is here, though, that we finally get an inkling of the music that must have surrounded Paul as a tribal child, just as the woods and animals and water did. Both their father and mother sing on the track, their dad in a striking wordless vibrato that sounds nothing like indie rock. In an album where Black Belt Eagle Scout celebrates their home, that’s the song where they finally let the listeners into the house.

Jennifer Kelly

[archivingformyself]

Ô Paon pins. Series of pins of the four elements. Ô Paon rose pin modeled after a "Croatia" pin found at an Anacortes thrift store. painting, 3.25" x 3.25"

(2022). Geneviève Castrée: Complete Works 1981-2016. Drawn & Quarterly. p. 301.

[abelkia]

La playlist de l'émission de ce jeudi matin sur Radio Campus Bruxelles entre 6h30 et 9h : Penguin Café Orchestra "Numbers 1-4" (Penguin Cafe Orchestra/Editions EG/1981) Alexander "Skip" Spence "Grey/Afro" (Oar/Columbia Records/1968) Thelonious Monk "Just You, Just Me" (The Unique Thelonious Monk/Riverside/1956) Jimmy Scott "When Did You Leave Heaven" (Very Truly Yours/Savoy Records/1955) Jac Berrocal, David Fenech, Vincent Epplay & Marc-Henri Lamande "IZevil + Lettre à Madame le Ministre" (7"/AcoustiArc/2022) Panda Bear & Sonic Boom "Edge of the Edge" (Reset/Domino Recording Company/2022) Karl Blau & Geneviève Castrée "Volcanologie" (7"/Ô Paon Records/2011) Rema-Rema "Feedback Song" (Fond Reflections/4AD/1980-2019) Anika "Sand Witches" (Change/Sacred Bones Records/2021) Leila "Underwaters (One for Keni)" (Like Weather/Rephlex Records/1998) Andrea Laszlo De Simone "I Nostri Giorni" (7"/42 Records/2022) Scott Walker "The Seventh Seal" (Scott 4/Philips/1969) Jeremiah "Turn The Dogs Loose" (Jeremiah/Vogue/1973) Mehdi Zannad "Au revoir" (Fugue/3rd Side Records/2011) Zouzou "Tu fais partie du passé" (Girls Rock/Wagram music/1967-2019) Céline Lory, "Tu me scotches" (Single Alone (Series)/Bandcamp/2023) Mrs. Elva Miller "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" (Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits/Capitol Records/1966) Claudette & Ti Pierre "L'école" (Pa Kontrarie'm/Marc Records/1980) The Poets "That's The Way It's Got to Be" (Scotland's No. 1 Group/Dynovox/1965-2000) Le Chorus Reverendus "Ne poussez pas mémé dans les orties" (7"/Cameleon Records/1967-2017) Jalil Bennis et Les Golden Hands "Mirza" (حبيبي فنك مختارات موسيقية متنوعة من الوطن العربي An Eclectic Selection Of Music from the Arab World/Habibi Funk/1967-2017) Tipical Me "Claustrofobian" (The Underground Wave 7"s/Walhalla Records/1985-2015) Moondog "High on a Rocky Ledge" (The German Years 1977-1999/ROOF Records/1979-2004) Rufus Wainwright "Matinee Idol" (Rufus Wainwright/Geffen Records/1998-2016) The Smiths "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" (The World Won't Listen/Rough Trade Records/1986-1987) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn4Ky5atKOf/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[buellerismyfriend]

Genevieve, Brussels, 6th June 2008

[goatpalacezine]

Mount Eerie: forever hanging in the silent air

Mount Eerie: forever hanging in the silent air

Records: A Crow Looked at Me (2017), Now Only (2017-18), (After) (2018), Lost Wisdom pt. 2 (2019) A white rose fell out of my lapeloutside the churchhhouselike a hand with too much sunA horse trampled itThe barefoot rider who wasjust passing throughleaned over backwardsand picked it up with his toesHe said Sorryand I said Much obligedAnd I took it from his dark footand gave it to his fine…

[nofatclips]

Distortion by Mount Eerie from the album Now Only

[sinceileftyoublog]

Live Picks: 12/9

Mount Eerie and Julie Doiron; Photo by Rin-san Jeff Miller

BY JORDAN MAINZER

A couple multi-night residences highlight tonight’s live picks.

Los Lobos, City Winery

As both a Jew and general scrooge, I hate most Christmas music. But even after days of consuming garbage food and commercialized crap on and after Thanksgiving and throughout the holiday season, I’ll gladly gobble up anything Los Lobos throws my way--even a Christmas album. Llego Navidad is a good one, from the trademark LL harmonies and shuffle of son jarocho track “La Rama”, “Reluciente Sol”, and “Arbolito de Navidad” to the Tex Mex of “It’s Christmas Time in Texas”. Per usual, the band’s up to speed with Latin and bossa nova-infused funk on songs like lowrider jam “Donde Esta Santa Clause?” and the title track. But it’s the latter that’s an example of the melancholy inherent in the holidays that also pervades the best songs on Llego Navidad. “Amarga Navidad” (which translates to “bitter Christmas”) and original song “Christmas and You” are heartsick, the latter a bonafide doo wop. And appropriately, the album ends with a classic, the inescapable Jose Feliciano song “Feliz Navidad”, that still sounds great coming out of this band.

Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron, Thalia Hall

“What would be the use in becoming a symbol of walking desolation?” asks Julie Doiron on Lost Wisdom Pt. 2. Mount Eerie’s 2017 and 2018 albums A Crow Looked At Me and Now Only centered almost entirely on the lead up to and aftermath of the death of Phil Elverum’s wife Geneviève Castrée, but his pseudo sequel to 2008′s Lost Wisdom is less autobiographical in its approach to mourning. Elverum’s still processing the death of his wife and single parenting but also his brief marriage to actress Michelle Williams. On “Love Without Possession”, he contemplates having a heart filled with love and nobody to direct it to. It’s a unique situation for Elverum that he likely hasn’t experienced since before meeting Castrée, and so he turned to Doiron, an old creative partner, to make some sense of things. What results is an album that, at its core, is about reflection.

“When I was younger and didn’t know / I used to walk around basically begging the sky / For some calamity to challenge my foundation,” Elverum sings on opener “Belief”, laughing at himself, both he and the audience knowing to be careful what you wish for. Yet, he subverts our expectations on the rest of the album, singing about his experiences in metaphor rather than explicit storytelling. On “When I Walk out of the Museum”, he sings, “I think about a snorkeler surfacing, tangled in kelp / That is me: writing, wild attention, glancing around.” It fits with his tales of walking through grocery stores after Castrée’s death, above all emotionally exhausted, not knowing how to interact with strangers and acquaintances checking in on him while being strangled by grief. “Look right into the fire,” the two sing on “Real Lost Wisdom”, experiencing life at its most raw; likewise, it’s worth noting that, aesthetically, Lost Wisdom Pt. 2 often returns to the side of Mount Eerie that’s distorted and crunchy, assaults of guitars, keyboards, and drums exploding without warning.

Yes, some of Lost Wisdom Pt. 2 contains direct references to Elverum’s relationship with Williams, mostly in the form of love lost and unfortunate tabloid exposure. It doesn’t distract from his philosophizing. On “Widows”, he and Doiron trade lines, his hyper specific and hers existential: “Today the tabloids told the world you separated me / And see what's there / My phone began dinging more than usual / In the open sky / It was just like the day they found out that we'd gotten married / Because we're all gonna die / Unwanted attention.” It’s the classic tale of a heartbreak triggering past ones, as Elverum describes. But he offers one caveat: “Please remember at the bookstore in the poetry corner upstairs / I slept with my head on your lap.” It could be an experience he had with Castrée, Williams, or even somebody else. The important part is that love once existed, strong as hell.

That’s where Elverum’s relationship with Castrée comes in beautifully on Lost Wisdom Pt. 2, something that understandably couldn’t be attained on the previous two records but is finally presented with the help of Doiron. Here, he doesn’t describe in painstaking, cringing detail her last days or doctor visits. Instead, he references the futility and randomness of life that’s nonetheless sweet and moving. “Even if I never get to see you again / I’ll know that when we collided / We both broke each other open,” he sings on “Love Without Possession”. His description of love as a safe haven on “Enduring the Waves” goes down as one of the best lines he’s ever written: “We were each other’s reward for enduring the waves.” It all leads to the final two tracks, ones that suggest Elverum might at one point find some light. “Could there be another spring?” he considers on “Pink Light”. And on “Belief Pt. 2″, he sets up a scene that you think might be self-pitying, him living with his parents after his divorce, but strongly declares, “I believed in love and I still do.” He’s already spread Castrée‘s ashes in the water, and this time, he pours out a glass of water in the same place. Adding water to water, he dilutes her memory, as time tends to do, but it’s this everlasting symbol of loss in general, something that’s always a part of life, that Elverum has no choice to accept. And acceptance has never sounded so beautiful.

Los Lobos; Photo by Piero F. Giunti

Andrew Bird, Fourth Presbyterian Church

In a busy year that saw him release his best record in years (which we wrote about in April) and cast in the upcoming season of Fargo, Andrew Bird somehow found time to reprise his Gezelligheid performances at the Fourth Presbyterian Church. The first of five nights is tonight, and presumably, Bird will play violin-forward selections from My Finest Work Yet along with a smattering of others from his 2010′s records, though you never know with these shows.

Singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham opens.

[mallskurv]

Les aventures de Mall Skurv #1

[c-kiddo]

lyrics from Crow, Pt. 2 - Now Only, Mount Eerie, 2018 / seal illustration on the CD and vinyl art - Geneviève Castrée, 2005

[agapi-kalyptei]

Death is real

It's after 8pm and I've been up for 18 hours so take me with a pinch of salt - I know I am.

It's one of those days when even the first episode of the new She-Ra almost makes me cry. I want to say that it's because it's so good, or so bad (it's actually v good), but no, it's because simple acts of sacrifice, bravery, and resilience can make me cry apparently.

More to the point: I've been listening to Mount Eerie regularly. Not only on dark days, when I'm sleep deprived or sad or lonely or tired. His two albums, A Crow Looked at Me, and Now Only, were refreshing breath of authenticity for me even when I was feeling calm and content, and not in the least morbid.

“But,” you don’t ask because this is a self-indulgent post, “doesn’t Mount Eerie himself call them ‘death songs’? How is it not morbid?” The thing is, he doesn’t celebrate death. He doesn’t glorify or fetishize death of his wife. He doesn’t elevate his pain into a glass case exhibit. He sings about love.

Love for his dead wife who lost her battle with pancreatic cancer, sure. The atoms of her remains are not her, he acknowledges. He wonders if it’s his responsibility to hold ‘some version of [her]’ in his memory, thus keeping her real for a bit longer. He talks about how his daughter recognizes her mom’s voice on a record. This isn’t self-pity, this is a story of a real relationship. Of things that happened recently and echo into the everyday reality of him and his daughter. Their daughter.

And so, Genevieve is real to me. I looked her up on youtube and it made it hurt more, because of course it did. This person, who doesn’t exist anymore, for a second felt more real that some of my acquaintances - a flash of dissociation, sure, but the her husband’s retelling of how they met, how they traveled and shared life felt more intense than some of my past attempted romances or dates. (And it’s not even their fault, it’s just what it is.)

And I’ve come to realize is, the reason why I love these two albums is not an obsession with a dead Canadian woman, nor with her husband, nor his situation as such. It’s the love they’ve had. It’s the love he still has. The love that manifests on everything around him, the photo of her on the fridge being the least of them. It’s about their history, from the grand plans to build to house to the mundane everyday details of their lives they shared. Death might be real, but that love is real and it survives death.

And since this summer, I’ve more and more realized this is what I want in a relationship. I don’t need to spend time on lukewarm affection.

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 My knees fail My brain fails Words fail Crusted with tears, catatonic and raw I go downstairs and outside and you still get mail A week after you died a package with your name on it came And inside was a gift for our daughter you had ordered in secret And collapsed there on the front steps I wailed A backpack for when she goes to school a couple years from now You were thinking ahead to a future you must have known Deep down would not include you Though you clawed at the cliff you were sliding down Being swallowed into a silence that's bottomless and real It's dumb And I don't want to learn anything from this I love you