musical". Elverum intended the songs to have a "hyper-intimate" and unrestrained quality and to be philosophical but devoid of metaphor, which he felt would be "cowardly and pointless". Elverum was compelled to make the album having found that works of art he once had treasured were ineffective in helping him cope with her illness and death. Even while writing the album, he remained unsure whether anyone except himself would ever hear it, and he had no goal in mind. He completed and released the record to "[open] up all the way", to make the intensity of his love for Castrée known, and to draw a distinction between art and the "experience of life". Elverum said the style of songwriting he used was the only kind that felt "appropriate" and "real" to him. He found the album's creation to be "therapeutic" and felt as though he were "hanging out" with Castrée during its production and said that, by the end of the process, he felt he had partially healed. Nonetheless, in an interview a year after the album's creation, he expressed disbelief that he had been able to make an album under the circumstances. Cover artwork The album cover consists of a photograph of Castrée's former art studio. The image captures a number of her personal items, including a blurry but recognizable copy of Hergé's 1960 graphic novel Tintin in Tibet. Stereogum writer Patrick Lyons speculated that the comic's appearance served as a connection to Elverum's following album, Now Only, which has a song titled "Tintin in Tibet". The photograph shows Elverum's hand holding a piece of paper with the poem "Night Palace" by Castrée's close friend Joanne Kyger. The poem had been important to Castrée, who pinned the paper above her desk years before her cancer diagnosis. Elverum chose to use it because he felt it encapsulated the album's themes, his grieving process and the manner in which he wished to perform the songs. Music and lyrics The lyrics are written in a style of poetic literalism with a sense of mysticism. Their main themes are Castrée's illness and death as well as Elverum's grief. Ideas of impermanence, emptiness, disorientation, and the absurdity of performing intimate material in public are present as well. Pastes Matt Fink suggested that although Elverum's repertoire of songs about mortality is perhaps second only to those about nature, A Crow Looked at Me "marks the