Reviews
The Songwriter as Poet. A Conversation with Phil Elverum
(Part One)
- By Jon Hoel, with Phil Elverum
Poems are songs, songs are poems. This dictum may infuriate anyone who has ever penned an editorial on Leonard Cohen’s songs or anyone who was irate when the Nobel committee declared Bob Dylan was literature. Those familiar with the history of songwriting, however, might be inclined to agree with such an equation, knowing their shared origin points.
Anyone presented with a songwriter such as Phil Elverum—who under the moniker Mount Eerie (and The Microphones before that), has been making some of the best music of the last few decades—would be compelled to do so....