After completing his run as The Microphones, experimental indie-folk artist Phil Elverum changed his moniker to the more regional Mount Eerie. Now on his seventh Mount Eerie LP, Elverum appears to have completely removed himself from the fragile acoustic accents that first informed his work. Pre-Human Ideas, a collection of auto-tune delivered poetry and organ noodling paired with Elverum's familiar sonic distortions, ironically (intentionally?) sounds more post-human than anything, favoring robotic distance over organic warmth.
Although Pre-Human Ideas may pass as abstract art, given the album's droll cover and promotional photos (including images of books on nature and plastic dinosaur figurines safely posed in an office environment) it very nearly feels like a practical joke. Kurt Vonnegut once framed literature as a "practical joke" but insisted that the joke must be a good one. Pre-Human Ideas simply isn't a very entertaining pun. If anything, its lyrics seem too earnest given the blatant "Look-Ma-I-made-this-with-a-computer" production.
Though the record becomes more accessible once the listener is accustomed to the overall aesthetic, and is intermittently enjoyable by the time it reaches its seventh or eighth track ("House Shape" actually uses the production's novelty to quite moving ends), it rarely connects the way it should. This might be part of the point, but such baffling, alienating music reflecting baffled, alienated modern man isn't easy to lose one's self in.
Elverum may be a genius who has transcended all musical forms that came before him or he might just be screwing around on a Mac, enjoying his coffee and a donut (as the cover suggests), creating a work of bitter, frustrated irony that loses its wistful nostalgia in an array of self-conscious affectations. But what is most troubling about Pre-Human Ideas is that underneath all the detached auto-tune, the record does seem to be touching at some implacable darkness lodged deep within us all. Mount Eerie's tone poem of an album hints at ideas of enormous weight but never lets the listener feel their full force.
Grade: C
Sir, I think you should consider that these are digital versions of songs already recorded for his earlier Mount Eerie LPs (mostly Clear Moon and Ocean's Roar). These songs were recorded this way so that his touring group could learn the parts. Most Mount Eerie fans are ardent collectors of everything Phil puts out and this is a part of that lineage. I agree that it is not a great listen from end to end but I do not believe it was ever intended to be reviewed as a serious album. I (a huge Mount Eerie fan) am frankly, baffled by the reviews posted by many major music publications...