Anyone familiar with Phil Elverum and his extensive catalog knows his music is not exactly for the casual listener. His albums under Mount Eerie, and even earlier with the Microphones, are usually deeply personal, immersive, and often challenging, asking listeners for close attention and commitment. Following those same lines, Night Palace, his 11th release after a four-year gap, takes listeners on a slow, winding journey through somber moods and reflective soundscapes. Inspired by journal entries and a rediscovery of Zen mediation, the record is rich with poetry and imaginative storytelling—a beautiful masterpiece for listeners expecting to be vulnerable and patient.
The titular track, “Night Palace”, opens the album with long feedback drones. Pipes clank and clack, and deep ruptures disperse. Elverum leaves a lot of space between each stanza. There is no undercurrent, nothing to hold on to. The piece unravels rubato. Elverum leaves us with either a question or a statement: “So what if nobody finds this notebook.” The following song, “Huge Fire”, gives listeners more immediate gratification. A bass groove leads a trio with drums and electric guitar, establishing a firm yet mournful tone for Eleverum’s sensitive voice.
“I Heard Whales (I Think)” describes Mount Eerie’s connection to nature. The subtle melodies he sings are enticing. At one point, we hear the ocean waves lapping against a beach or rocky coast. Elverum hums what sounds like a whale song. “Wind & Fog” and “Wind & Fog, Pt. 2” flow into each other with long feedback intervals and ambient sounds. In the latter, Elverum sings lower in his register. He sounds like a completely different character here—confident and knowing, more like Leonard Cohen. It’s a pleasant surprise from his usual, more falsetto, worried voice.
Among the emotional soundscapes, humor occasionally penetrates. Take the mythical “I Spoke to a Fish”. Elverum asks, “What you see as a palace is running water?” He mimics the fish’s response in a deep and solemn voice, “No”. For a brief moment, trappy hi-hats flood the space, and his voice transforms with autotune. It’s a quite stirring moment that becomes more impactful and desirous each time you revisit it. Later, Elverum tells the fish that he likes how he moves through the water as “one flowing muscle”. A sound bite from The Big Lebowski responds as the fish: “I love your style too, man.”
For all the times there is beauty and humor, other times there is chaos. On “Swallowed Alive”, the loud, booming dissonance feels like a catastrophic event is happening in real-time. A scream pierces through the bombastic drums. It’s hardly a song but a brief mood that occurs, passing as quickly as it erupted. Elverum’s daughter closes the track with innocence and wonder, talking about being swallowed by a whale. The track feels intense and cathartic and provides the darkest moment.
A pitfall with poetry, whether accompanied by music or not, is that it can sometimes come across as pretentious or cringy. Fortunately for Elverum, his writing is good enough that he mostly doesn’t slip into those labels. On “My Canopy” and “Broom of Wind”, two tracks that happen to follow each other, his lyrics miss the mark and come off clunky: “Some affection is mercurial” and “Sweeping with an old broom / Whose straw keeps chunking off / For me to sweep up.” There may be some skippable moments on the album, but doing so would disrupt the intended experience.
Night Palace slowly unfolds across the nearly hour-and-a-half-long run time, taking listeners through an ephemeral patchwork of moods. There are sparse moments of feedback and poetry, literal remnants of a conventional indie rock song, and explosive fits of rage, a broad spectrum of intensities. Not every listener will appreciate the inherent pretentiousness. You have to be in a particular mood—like the aftermath of a disappointing election—to reap the rewards. Night Palace is exhausting and requires a lot of patience for listeners to fully absorb the experiential gestalt that most Mount Eerie albums require.