During their double headline set at City Recital Hall, both Julie Byrne and Mount Eerie remarked independently of one another (but in very different ways) on the vastness of the venue. With characteristic openheartedness, Julie Byrne explained that, coming from the New York DIY scene, it was the first time for her and musical companion Eric Littmann playing such a huge venue. In his distinctively deadpan way, Mount Eerie remarked, "Thank you for all the attention. This is a lot of attention."
The audience laughed, many of them still in tears from his last song. Last year, Mount Eerie released an album that is hard to describe. Written entirely about the death of his wife Geneviéve from cancer in 2016, Phil Elverum released a set of lonely, spare acoustic sketches delivered tumbling, conversationally, frenzied, resigned. It was the same energy that he conjured on-stage, and it wasn't a surprise to see him wipe away tears at the end of several numbers.
But it was Julie Byrne who first entranced the audience. Warmly enveloping and deeply personal, her songs reverberated around the City Recital Hall despite their softness and gentleness. Her voice has the purity and power of a young Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell, even more so in a live setting, and she plays guitar with an effortlessness and sensitivity that sees her hand almost absent-mindedly drift away from the fretboard while her fingerpicked melodies still ring out clear.
Littman's Korg synthesizer provided minimal accompaniment, bringing out the innate luminousness of songs like "Natural Blue" or "Melting Grid" from last year's exceptional Not Even Happiness. Interspersed between songs were miniscule and fascinating reminiscences. Particularly beguiling was when Byrne recounted her former home in a converted dancehall where she had curtains for walls, leading into the gorgeous, wistful "Marmalade."
Mount Eerie - Phil Elverum alone on stage with just his guitar - chose to begin his set with a song that only came out a few days ago. "Distortion" is rangy and raging, 11-minutes of Elverum reminiscing about when he learned of death and when he confronted it. Immediately, it seemed Geneviéve was in the room - her presence (or rather her absence) a pall across the unassuming singer.
Through pieces like "Real Death," "Ravens" and "Toothbrush/Trash," the evocation of the days immediately before and after the death of Elverum's beloved wife seemed present and claustrophobic in ways that live music normally can't be. It felt uncomfortable to applaud at the end of such raw and hurt songs.
After checking a small piece of paper that he pulled from his breast pocket, Elverum announced, "I'm going to play some new songs now." Hoots from devoted fans in the audience prompted him to reply "They're not fun" with a self-deprecating laugh. But Mount Eerie's new songs - due out in March on the album Now Only - are cosmic, searching, and, yes, funny. Geneviéve still lingers in Mount Eerie's songs, but he indulges in sing-song melodies and bemused wonderings at how wonderful his daughter is and just how much he loved and continues to love the woman who changed his life and still influences it so much.
"Tintin in Tibet" may be one of the most gorgeous, heartfelt, affecting pieces ever attached to the Mount Eerie name. As its love-addled narrative drew the set to a close, the starkness of Mount Eerie reconciled with the brilliant largesse of Julie Byrne that still lingered. Sometimes we're alone and lost and miserable, but love never dies. With little more than their guitars and their voices, both Julie Byrne and Mount Eerie filled City Recital Hall with enormous beauty for an enormous and very lucky crowd.
Mount Eerie and Julie Byrne performed at City Recital Hall as part of the 2018 Sydney Festival.
