Now Only is the ninth studio album by Mount Eerie, the solo project of American musician Phil Elverum.

The album departs from A Crow Looked at Me's raw and intimate style of writing, intending, instead, to answer grander and more introspective questions about Elverum's life after Castrée's death.

To promote the album, he released the singles "Distortion" on January 17, 2018, and "Tintin in Tibet" on February 20, 2018, and undertook tours of North America and Europe.

[1] In 2015, four months after the birth of their first child, Phil Elverum's wife, Canadian cartoonist and musician Geneviève Castrée, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

[4] After releasing A Crow Looked at Me in 2017, Elverum decided that he did not want to play any of his older songs because they seemed "irrelevant" and so continued to write in order to have enough material to go on tour.

[8] Moving on from the raw catharsis of the previous album, Elverum approached the writing of Now Only from an introspective perspective, attempting to answer the question of how Castrée exists in his life post-death.

It features a Walt Whitman quote: "Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes",[a] photos of wildlife, Beat Happening and Castrée, postcards, portraits and friends' writing.

[7][10] Elverum chose to use his refrigerator as the album cover upon realizing how the images displayed on it had subconsciously influenced the lyrics.

[26] Alongside that it features guitar arpeggios, distorted metal bass notes, vocal harmonies and piano trills.

[9] It also references Elverum's childhood memory of his great-grandfather's funeral in particular the impact of seeing his corpse and a pregnancy scare he experienced at age 23.

"[29] Elverum reflects on his time spent in hospitals, the absurdity of playing his "death songs" to audiences at a music festival outside of Phoenix, Arizona and the success of A Crow Looked at Me.

[35] The song is more energetic than "Crow" although it still retains the previously established dark tone and features finger-picked acoustic guitar.

[19][35] On January 17, 2018, Elverum announced that he would release a new album and go on tour, performing select North American dates.

[38][39] Alongside the announcement Elverum released the first single "Distortion" to positive reviews, netting the "Best New Track" distinction from Pitchfork[27] and being called the best song of the week by Under the Radar.

[40] The second single, "Tintin in Tibet" was released on February 20, 2018, again to positive reviews, appearing on Under the Radar's list of the 12 best songs of the week.

[19] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian said, "Elverum still sounds lost in fathomless pain, struggling to get on with his life while terrified of letting his wife's memory fade".

[56] Thomas Britt of Popmatters said that the album "will be of interest to Mount Eerie devotees but feels more downbeat and less necessary than its predecessor".

Club said, "Where Crow occupied a numb, purgatorial present tense, the new record leaps around like a wandering mind, to vivid anecdotes from the singer-songwriter's past".

Such as AllMusic,[61] The Daily Emerald,[62] Digital Trends,[63] Earbuddy,[64] Exclaim!,[65] KCPR,[66] Loud and Quiet,[67] Noisey,[68] NPR,[69] Pitchfork,[70] The Seattle Times,[71] The Skinny,[72] Slate,[73] Tiny Mix Tapes,[74] and Treblezine.

[75] Songs such as "Tintin in Tibet", "Distortion" and "Now Only" also appeared on year-end top lists by Treblezine,[76] Pitchfork,[77] and the Phoenix New Times,[31] respectively.