Sauna, the latest album from Mount Eerie, delivers an imagined wooden room that is being crushed by the concentration of heat in this difficult weather. The 12 songs, interestingly all single-word titled, varied from including heavy-weighted background music to having sensationally clear front voices. Phil Elverum, who changed his moniker from the Microphones to Mount Eerie after the area in Anacortes, Washington called Mount Erie, finishes this 10-year long project, which includes the first Mount Eerie album, No Flashlight, and noteworthy releases Mount Eerie pts. 6&7 and Lost Wisdom with artists including Allyson Foster and Ashely Eriksson. Noticeably, it took Elverum three years after the release of the last two albums, Clear Moon and Ocean Roar. Thus, the effort Elverum has put into his P.W. Elverum & Sun, Ltd studio in his hometown Anacortes is enormous.
His voice is sometimes cozy, like the slowly rising steam inside a sauna, with mundane sentiments and gentle lines. When he sings “So I make coffee while looking out the window/ And notice that I can’t remember when or if I woke up” or “Nothing to do then to walk to town then back,” the softness and relaxation in his voice almost soothes our nerves like a sauna can do. His voice is especially ethereal in “Youth” and “Emptiness,” as the title suggests, and more emotional elements than the naturally orientated “Pumpkin” or “Spring.”
The title track hit in around 10 minutes on this 55-minute album, and the initial intake of a deep breath signifies a crucial moment. More importantly, the song included his emotions towards Norway, a snowy remote country in which he spent some time. The mentioning of the North Sea also appears as a theme throughout “Books” and “This,” which adds to his nostalgic emotions to the old memories of “Only this room in the snow” fittingly with the February Madison weather. Though full of careful portrayals of emotions, the album does not limit itself to this but goes on to include frantic heavy metal, distorted smears and bass arches.
