Night Palace
A sprawling, 26-track double album of tape-hiss folk, ambient drift, and sudden noise bursts recorded in the damp forests of the Pacific Northwest.
A sprawling, 26-track double album of tape-hiss folk, ambient drift, and sudden noise bursts recorded in the damp forests of the Pacific Northwest.
Expansive career culmination
Rainwater drips from cedar needles into a microphone, mixing with the hum of a cheap cassette deck. These twenty-six tracks feel like a door left open to the damp woods, where quiet acoustic strumming suddenly gives way to bursts of distorted static and slow, electronic pulses. You are sitting on a cold porch in the dark, listening to someone piece together their world out of tape hiss, wind, and the heavy silence that follows a storm.
The songwriting plunges deeper into the Pacific Northwest wilderness than ever before, elevating nature from a mere backdrop to an active, breathing collaborator that speaks through the rustle of wind and the damp soil.
Critics warmly embraced the album as an ambitious, atmospheric summation of the songwriter's career, praising its rich poetry, deep connection to nature, and resistance to simple categorization. Reviewers were especially moved by the record's patient, reflective moods and its ability to synthesize decades of sonic exploration into a beautifully chaotic and wise journey.
“The album defies easy categorization, which ultimately offers a welcome challenge”Read review
“Phil Elverum’s first Mount Eerie album in five years feels like a culmination of his work over the past 25 years, making room for all his earlier selves and sounds”Read review
“Phil Elverum seems to have made peace with impermanence on his latest, a sprawling 26-track double album”Read review
“Night Palace is an atmospheric, ambitious album by one of modern music’s most open songwriters”Read review
“Night Palace is a chaotic (good) album, one that doesn’t comply with pigeons or holes, and just won’t fit into a neat coherent narrative, as much as I have attempted to horn that shoe”Read review
“It’s a resounding testament to Elverum’s unbreakable connection with nature and his singular creative vision”Read review
“Mount Eerie’s new LP takes listeners on a slow journey through somber moods and reflective soundscapes, rich with poetry and imaginative storytelling”Read review
“Night Palace could easily be defined as Elverum’s wisest release. It contains the breadth of a career and of a life spent in dedication to compatible wavelengths, of sounds in the new.”Read review
“Phil Elverum’s latest is a thorny, beautiful 80-plus minute journey”Read review
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