Live Review: Mount Eerie, Julie Byrne

Julie Byrne serenely picks at her guitar, whispering her contemplative lyrics. All but two songs are accompanied by various synthesiser textures, which add considerably to her compositions. Few melodies stick, but her ethereal lullabies establish an appropriately plaintive, mournful atmosphere as we brace ourselves for Mount Eerie.

When he emerges, Mount Eerie (aka Phil Elverum) looks like a 39-year-old dude whose wife just died. He is alone with his nylon-string guitar, from which he begins plucking Distortion, a recently released 11-minute meditation that is about his first time seeing a dead body - his great-grandfather, when Elverum was a kid - and his second - his wife Genevieve in July, 2016. The emotional onslaught continues with a suite of songs from last year's astounding A Crow Looked At Me including Real Death, Ravens and Crow. During these devastating songs the audience is utterly silent, aside from scattered sobs and sighs and gasps to relieve the crushing weight pressing down on our chests.

Elverum then graces us with several new songs from his upcoming album Now Only. The new songs are more reflective and have greater perspective than those that appeared on the last album. They sound like the next stages of grief. There is anger and reminiscing in the rambling Two Paintings By Nikolai Astrup, as well as numbness and shock. Some are even funny at times. The most light-hearted moment of Elverum's entire set is his upbeat delivery of the line, "People get cancer and die," in Now Only. He sings it like it's a children's song and large swathes of the crowd laugh. Elverum says, "Yeah, funny. Why are we laughing?" But he must understand better than anyone else here the impulse to find some relief amid unrelenting bleakness. Mount Eerie's set closes with Tintin In Tibet, during which he ruminates on meeting Genevieve and falling in love, and times before their relationship was defined by death and disease.

Then Elverum abruptly leaves the stage without putting down his guitar or saying a word. We sit staring, clapping, trying to gather the strength to stand. Couples cling to each other, wondering who will die first and whether the one left behind will transform their grief into transcendent art. And now I guess we're meant to just continue on with our lives?