Promoted as a double-bill of minimalist, melancholic folk music and there is no better way to describe the evening. Jane Byne started the evening off with a voice that defines the word ethereal. In fact her whole demeanour was ethereal. She shyly enters the stage and thanks us for coming. She seems generally surprised so many people would come to hear her sing “I am usually just performing to a group of people in a room of a warehouse” she apologises. When she sings it is a beautiful breath of air and it hangs around us. their is a lot about connection and relationship with one another in her music. Sitting along on the stage and accompanying herself on the guitar for most of the evening the audience is drawn into a hypnotic, relaxed state as she weaves us through her set.
Mount Eerie is a very different feel in the second act. While also presenting a laid back, no fuss performance and accompanying himself on the guitar, the feel of the second act is very different and affected me long after I had left the building. Mount Eerie takes ‘personal’ to a whole new level. The evening is a collection of songs from his last album plus a few newer ones. The songs are his exploration and journey of grief having lost the love of his life and mother of his young child last year to cancer. The lyrics are so raw you can see him struggle with each song, sometimes taking a breath before he launches into the next. At one point he introduces a song as a new one and the audience applauds “Don’t get me wrong” he says “Its still bleak”. While poetic in nature, the lyrics are direct, blunt and have no pretence. Phil Elverum is in pain. He is finding his way through this pain, unsure of whether he wants to survive it, grow from it, wallow in it or just sit in it and let it wash over. Lyrics like “I don’t want to learn from this. I love you” bluntly explain the emotion and frustration, “Conceptual emptiness was cool to talk about back before I knew my way around these hospitals”.
This exorcism or exploration or sharing of grief was profound and moving. It might not be for everyone but it was an extraordinary experience that I am still carrying with me.
“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”
Lynden Jones – Theatre Now & On The Town
