Welcome to today's deep dive. I'm so glad you're
here with us because today we are stepping back
in time just a little bit. Yeah, we're taking
a bit of a trip. Exactly. I want you to think
back to the year 2005. That was a wild time for
media. It really, really was. I mean, if you
remember 2005, you might remember it as this
major, this massive turning point for how we
consume just about everything. Right. The iTunes
music store was absolutely exploding. The very
first iPod shuffle had just hit the market. Oh,
man, the shuffle. I remember that. Right. And
music was, well. It was rapidly becoming weightless.
We were trading in those physical CD booklets
and those heavy vinyl records. And visible digital
files. Exactly. Files that just lived on our
hard drives. Everything was about convenience.
Everything was about speed. Sort of the dawn
of the bite -sized culture we live in now. Yeah,
precisely. But right in the middle of that massive
cultural shift toward frictionless consumption,
an indie rock artist decided to release an album
that demanded the exact opposite from its audience.
And that is what makes this so interesting. It
really does. So today we are exploring a Wikipedia
article detailing the 2005 debut studio album
by the band Mount Eerie. The album is titled
No Flashlight, Songs of the Fulfilled Night.
Okay, let's unpack this. Our mission today is
to look at how an artist attempts to communicate
a sprawling, really complex philosophical worldview.
In an increasingly bite -sized culture and perhaps
more importantly, we want to see how the public
reacts when a piece of art demands that you,
the listener, sit down and do a little extra
homework. What's fascinating here is that this
deep dive is about far more than just a 2005
indie rock album. Right. It really serves as
a brilliant case study on information overload.
It's about physical media versus abstract philosophy.
And it really highlights the friction between
the creator's intent and the critic's reception.
Yeah, that friction is key. When you examine
the source material for this album, you quickly
realize you are looking at an artifact that actively
protests passive consumption. It forces us to
ask whether art should be something that just,
you know, washes over you. or something that
you have to actively decode. And to really understand
the mechanics of that decoding process, we kind
of need to establish the origins of the project.
We do. Mount Erie is essentially the singular
vision of one key creator, and that's Phil Elverum.
Right. For No Flashlight, Elverum took on almost
every major role himself. I mean, he handled
the lead vocals, the songwriting, the production,
and the engineering. Which is a massive undertaking.
Oh, absolutely. He did bring in a few collaborators
to add texture to the project, though. T. Stolenwork
handled the mixing at a studio called The Unknown.
Great name for a studio. Yeah, very fitting for
this project. And there are also guest appearances
by artists Genevieve Castret and Jason Wall.
But, you know, the recording locations themselves
are what immediately stand out in the source
material. They really do. The album was recorded
between October 19, 2004 and January 30, 2005.
And some of the tracking took place at a studio
called Dub Narcotic. in Olympia, Washington.
A legendary spot for indie music. For sure. But
the rest of the album, the source notes that
it was recorded at a location credited simply
as Nowhere in Anacortes, Washington. Which is
such a striking geographical statement. Just
calling it Nowhere. Exactly. By crediting a studio
as Nowhere, the artist is deliberately positioning
the origin of this music entirely outside the
standard commercial studio system. Yeah. It signals
isolation. It signals this intense introspection
before you even hear the very first chord. But
wait, does that geographical isolation actually
translate into the audio? Or is naming your recording
space nowhere just, I don't know, a bit of indie
rock posturing? That's a fair question. Because
it sounds cool, sure, but... Does it really mean
anything tangible for you as the listener? It
does when you look at how that isolation manifested
in the physical product. The introspection wasn't
just a gimmick for the liner notes. It was baked
right into the physical object itself. And that
brings us to the actual release. This is where
the story gets incredibly compelling for anyone
out there who appreciates physical media. Oh,
definitely. When this album was originally released
in 2005, it was under the catalog name ELV005
for the label. PW Elverum & Son, LTD in the U
.S., and the Playrec label in Europe. Right.
But it was not your standard plastic CD jewel
case. Not at all. It wasn't just a basic vinyl
record in a cardboard sleeve either. The physical
versions of No Flashlight came bundled with this
oversized labyrinthine fold -out poster. And
the contents of that fold -out are entirely crucial
to understanding what Elverum was trying to achieve
here. He wasn't just, you know, giving you a
standard track list. Far from it. On one side
of this giant piece of paper, you get a large
illustration. But on the reverse side, Elverum
crammed the space with exhaustive footnotes.
Just packed it. Yeah. We were talking detailed,
paragraph -long explanations of the songs, obscure
outside references, various clippings and photographs.
And a lot to take in. Imagine buying a pop album
today. But to understand the chorus you have
to literally unfold a CVS receipt of philosophical
footnotes on your living room floor. That's a
great analogy. It was a literal map of his brain
at the exact moment of recording. And if we connect
this to the bigger picture, you know, for you
listening right now, it speaks directly to how
we process information today. We live in a world
defined by doom scrolling, where articles and
videos just flash past us in seconds. By providing
this extensive physical map to his mind, Elverum
was deliberately introducing friction into the
listening experience. Friction. I like that word
for this. Yeah. He was forcing his audience to
slow down. The demand is very clear. You have
to hold the context. in your hands and read along.
It asserts that the audio is only one half of
the equation. Right. The tangible written context
is the other half. But is that an act of generous
sharing or is it just a creator being, well,
overly controlling? That's the debate, isn't
it? Yeah, because it almost feels like a film
director pausing the movie every five minutes
to explain to the audience what the characters
are feeling rather than just letting the art
speak for itself. It is a huge demand on the
listener's time. That is the core tension of
the entire project. And the irony here is that,
despite the sprawling supplementary reading material,
the music itself is remarkably concise. It really
is. We are talking about a lo -fi indie rock
journey that spans 15 tracks, but clocks in at
a brisk 37 minutes and 51 seconds. Very tight.
Very. Although, if you lived in Japan, the Japanese
version featured four bonus tracks, which extended
the runtime to 45 minutes and 75 seconds. Wait.
45 .75. Yes. Measuring time as 45 .75 is a highly
peculiar, precise way to document a runtime.
But that is exactly how it's listed in the source.
That fits the vibe perfectly, honestly. It does.
Those Japanese bonus tracks also included further
collaborations, such as the song Waterfalls,
which featured the artist Adrienne Orange. And
the album didn't just disappear after 2005. It
had a surprisingly long lifespan, which shows
this continuous dedication to the sonic experience
separate from... just the physical packaging
ten years later in 2015 elverum returned to the
project It was entirely remixed, remastered,
and repressed with newly redesigned jackets under
a fresh catalog number, which was ELV037. Right,
acknowledging the passage of time with the catalog
number. Exactly. Now, for the casual listener
out there, remastering an album essentially means
taking the original audio and giving it a high
-definition polish so it sounds pristine on modern
speakers. Right. But doing that for a lo -fi
album, a genre that is literally defined by its
raw, unpolished... DIY sound full of tape hiss
and rune noise is a fascinating paradox. It really
is. You are polishing something that was specifically
designed to sound rough. It shows that Elverm
was deeply invested in the pure audio mechanics
of the project, not just the philosophical concepts
surrounding it. He cared about the sound. He
spent a decade refining that dense physical presentation
and tweaking the audio. Yeah. But at the exact
same time, he possessed the self -awareness to
completely deconstruct it. Yes. Here's where
it gets really interesting. I love this part.
Right. Because despite all those exhaustive footnotes,
despite the oversized poster and the clipping
explanations, Elvira made an artistic choice
that completely contradicted the need for any
of that reading material. He really did. He took
the drum tracks from this heavily conceptual,
lyric -driven album. And he released them as
a standalone project. An entirely separate album
consisting of nothing but the rhythm section,
no vocals, no lyrics, no deep philosophical musings,
just drums. It was released under the highly
practical title, The Drums from No Flashlight
by Mount Erie. Straight to the point. And the
justification the band gave for the spinoff is
just wonderfully straightforward. According to
the source, they simply said, quote, We felt
the drums on No Flashlight sounded good enough
to listen to by themselves. That decision highlights
such a profound duality in the artist. On one
hand, you have the overthinking philosopher handing
you a dense syllabus so you can fully grasp the
depth of his worldview. Yeah, the CVS receipt
of footnotes. Exactly. But on the other hand,
he is confident enough in the raw primal instrumentation
that he is willing to strip absolutely all of
the intellectualizing away. Wow. Yeah. He removes
his own voice, he removes the context, and he
just lets the beat carry the weight of the project.
Which makes you wonder which version of the art
is the critics actually preferred. Oh, the critics
had a field day with this one. They really did.
When a creator hands the music press a brief
37 -minute indie rock album, tethered to a giant
poster of esoteric text. How does the critical
establishment react? Well, looking at the source,
we see a deeply fractured response. Very fractured.
Let's look at the Metacritic score. It sits at
a 72 out of 100 based on five professional critics.
Now, a 72 might technically be categorized by
the site as generally favorable. But in the realm
of highly conceptual indie music, a score in
the low 70s rarely means everyone thought it
was just OK. Right. It's not a consensus of.
average. No, it usually indicates a deeply polarized
reaction. It means some critics viewed it as
a masterpiece of vulnerability, while others
found it completely unbearable, and the average
just meets in the middle. And the source material
backs that up perfectly. Let's start with the
critics who went along for the ride, the ones
who embraced the friction and the heavy reading.
The positive camp. Yeah. The publication Tiny
Mixtapes offered a very positive review. They
felt that Elverum was deliberately trying to
communicate a particular message with little
abstraction. Interesting word choice, little
abstraction, considering all the footnotes. Right.
But they praised the effort, writing that he
was using the album to, quote, share with us
something special to him, and he's doing so in
the most honest way he can. Notice the emphasis
on honesty there. For that specific critic, the
exhaustive footnotes weren't seen as pretentious
or controlling. They were interpreted as an act
of radical vulnerability. Like letting someone
read your diary. Precisely. The artist is laying
all his cards on the table, inviting you entirely
into his creative process. Portland Mercury echoed
a very similar sentiment. Reviewers Zach Pennington
and Adam Gnade pointed out that Elverum had just
released three consecutive records of progressive
conceptual vision. He was on a run. He was. But
they felt no flashlight served a different purpose
entirely. They wrote that the album seems to
be more about a search for something than a destination.
A search. Yeah. Even if the project was sometimes
frustrating to decode, they argued it was the
questions that kept them coming back. They ended
their critique by asking their readers to ponder,
quote, what does Mount Erie mean anyway? Which
is such a profound way to engage with a piece
of art. The Portland Mercury reviewers are essentially
validating the friction Elverum introduced. They're
saying the confusion is part of the experience.
They are arguing that the confusion is the point.
The messy search for meaning is the art itself,
not just the finished melody. We see that praise
continued by Elizabeth Newton over at the Quietus.
She really gravitated toward the psychological
aspects of the album. She praised the fluctuations
in Elverum's persona, describing the vibe as
being self -consciously sullen and wrung from
second thoughts. Wow, wrung from second thoughts.
That's a great description of that lo -fi, over
-analyzed aesthetic. Newton argued that despite
that internal conflict, it adds up to a stable
whole because his tone is so distinctive. Her
ultimate conclusion was that the music is laced
with its maker's insistent worldview at every
turn, and it's better for it. So the positive
camp is largely united in the belief that the
artist's insistent worldview enhances the music.
Yeah, they bought into it. The philosophy doesn't
crowd out the art. The philosophy is the bedrock
that makes the art interesting to them. But surely
there is a limit, right? Because for every critic
who loved the search for meaning, there was another
who felt the philosophy absolutely suffocated
the music. And here is where the divide happens.
We start to see this pushback bubble up in a
mixed review from Stylus. They actually enjoyed
parts of the album, to be fair. They specifically
highlighted the track How, praising it for being
beautifully hummed. And it is worth noting that
How... Is the track featuring guest artist Genevieve
Castret providing those humming vocals? Right.
It is a perfect example of how the raw musicality
of the album succeeds when you focus on the texture
rather than the text. The sound versus the reading.
Because when stylists focused on the text, they
were not impressed. Oh, not at all. They argued
that Elverum's overarching concept was a rather
muddled one. They called his insistence on explaining
everything a surfeit explanation bordering on
the absurd. Bordering on the absurd. That's harsh.
Yeah. They felt that handing the listener a giant
poster of context actually detracted from the
album at key moments. Did they point to a specific
moment where the philosophy fell flat for them?
They did, and it is pretty brutal. Stylus pointed
out a specific lyric from a track called No Inside,
No Out that really made them cringe. Let's hear
it. They labeled it an unfortunate lyric. It'd
go like this. Because the pupil of my eye is
a hole. There's no inside and there's no out.
The world is in me and I am in the world. okay
you can certainly see how a lyric like that could
divide an audience yeah it's very it's very earnest
in the right environment accompanied by raw tape
hiss and acoustic guitars that might feel like
a profound zen meditation to someone sure but
to a skeptical music critic it might just sound
like something a teenager scribbled in the margins
of their high school notebook and nobody was
more skeptical than pitchfork oh pitchfork The
reviewer, Sam Ubel, gave the album a flat 5 .0
out of 10, and his critique was absolutely scorching.
They don't hold back. Never. Ubel acknowledged
that demanding listener input isn't inherently
a bad thing, but he felt that the way Elverum
went about it, demanding the audience endlessly
ponder his persona and read his notes crossed
a major line. Ubel actually called the album
esoteric hooey. Esoteric hooey. That is a highly
specific, devastating critique. It really is.
It completely strips away all the mystique of
recording in a place called nowhere. He went
even further, too. Ubel called the approach disingenuous
and annoying and went as far as to claim that
Elverum now makes boring music that is premised
on his persona and the explanation thereof. Wow.
He fundamentally rejected the entire premise
of the oversized foldout and the dense footnotes.
To Pitchfork, the explanations weren't an honest
gift to the listener. They were a crutch designed
to prop up uninspired songs. This raises an important
question for you, the listener, to consider in
your own life. When you are engaging with any
complex piece of information, how much work should
it demand from you? When does a creator's deep,
footnote -heavy worldview cross that invisible
line? At what point does a generous sharing of
knowledge transform into an exhausting, demanding
chore? It's subjective, isn't it? It is a very
delicate balance. We want our artists, our authors,
and our leaders to have a distinct worldview,
but we also expect the work to stand on its own
two feet without requiring a supplementary textbook
to make sense of it. So what does this all mean?
When we look back at the Wikipedia page for Mount
Yuri's No Flashlight, Songs of the Fulfilled
Night, we are left with a perfectly balanced
dual nature. We really are. On one hand, you
have a piece of work that the publication exclaims
it. specifically included in a ranking of Elverum's
essential albums. It's a project that bravely
protests passive consumption. It asks its audience
to read extensive footnotes, examine clippings,
and ponder their place in the universe while
listening to lo -fi indie rock. And then there's
the other hand. Exactly. On the exact same hand
from the exact same recording sessions in Nowhere,
Washington, you just have a collection of really,
really good drum tracks that work all on their
own. It is a powerful reminder that complexity
and simplicity can comfortably coexist within
the same creator and even within the exact same
project. And think about how that applies to
your daily routine, whether you are parsing through
a dense 50 -page financial report for a Monday
morning meeting or trying to wrap your head around
an entirely new academic field. Or just listening
to an obscure indie rock album from 2005. Right.
There is a constant push and pull. There is always
a balance to be struck between the overarching,
complicated philosophy of a subject and the simple
underlying rhythm that actually keeps it moving
forward. You don't always have to understand
the sprawling footnotes to feel the beat. I want
to leave you with a final thought to mull over,
something that builds on this tension we've explored
today. Please do. Imagine an artist creates a
work so dense, so layered, and so philosophically
complex that it literally requires a giant physical
map of text just to explain his state of mind.
The ultimate homework assignment. Right. But
then that same artist turns around and releases
an instrumental version consisting solely of
the raw drum tracks. Yeah. Which version is actually
communicating the truest meaning? meaning of
the art can the primal wordless rhythm of a drum
set say more about the human experience than
a thousand carefully curated footnotes ever could
now that is something to think about thank you
so much for joining us on this deep dive we will
catch you next time