Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2010

(from left) Will Kidman, Julie Dorion and Mount Eerie, aka Phil Elverum. Photo by James Hadfield

“Does anybody have any requests?” Julie Doiron asks from the stage at Shibuya O-Nest. “Play ‘Taller Beauty’,” calls out one punter. “OK, I take that back,” she says, laughing. Now onto her eighth solo album, the former Eric’s Trip mainstay can be forgiven for forgetting how to play songs from over a decade back. When she announces that she’s going to attempt “Too Much,” off 2002’s Heart and Crime, she ends up playing the introduction to a different song before realizing her mistake.

Such is Doiron’s charm as a performer. And, self-conscious giggles and fumbles aside, she’s still an absolute treasure. Accompanied by Will Kidman’s understated guitar and backing vocals, she runs through a series of heartfelt pop miniatures so hushed, there’s often no need for a microphone.

Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum takes the stage soon afterwards, apparently just to do a sound check, then promptly launches into his first number. This abruptness continues throughout his set: songs suddenly cut off, leaving a delicious “wtf?” pause, Eleverum gazing out with puppy-dog alarm before the applause begins. He sticks mostly to material from last year’s Wind’s Poem LP, but makes no attempt to recreate the Black metal-inspired textures that made it such a daunting listen. Performed on acoustic guitar, the songs inevitably lose some of their force, but the elemental nature of the lyrics remains—all wind, forests and mountains. If it were Nick Cave singing this stuff you might think it a bit hokey, but Elverum’s soft, throaty delivery sounds closer to Nick Drake, making the welter of apocalyptic imagery feel somehow human, even intimate.

The highlight of the evening comes at the end, when Doiron joins Elverum to perform the songs off their 2008 collaboration Lost Wisdom, with Kidman filling in for the absent Fred Squire. It’s a record that I missed when it first came out, but on tonight’s evidence, it’s one that’s well worth tracking down. Doiron’s vocals provide a confident foil to Elverum’s more diffident singin, no more so than when she’s lifting a Bjork refrain on “Voice in Headphones.”