For someone whose life has recently gone in a rather austere direction, Phil Elverum has a lot to say on Night Palace. It’s his first album as Mount Eerie since 2019, and the idea of making music often receded into the background in the intervening years, particularly after the one-album revival of his previous project, the Microphones, in 2020.
Instead, Elverum directed his energy toward building a house and what he has called “basic forest maintenance” on a parcel of land on Orcas Island, Washington, where he moved with his young daughter after Elverum’s brief marriage to the actress Michelle Williams fell apart in 2019. All those hours alone in the woods have afforded Elverum plenty of time to think, and the universe has given him a lot to reflect on: the 2016 death of his first wife from pancreatic cancer, raising their daughter on his own from the time she was about 16 months old, the rise and fall of his romance with Williams, the start of a subsequent relationship. No one wants to dwell on the misfortunes that have befallen Elverum, but the past decade of his life is there on Night Palace, a mammoth 26-track double-album that stretches past 80 minutes in length.
It’s there, but also, it’s not. Elverum is oblique about the emotional tumult he has experienced over the past decade, which exists here in the elisions and allusions of lyrics that concern themselves with nature, and his place within it. He sings of rain, snow, wind and fog, and describes the “shattered wood” he drags into bonfires, where it slowly disintegrates into embers and ash. Such imagery comes as Elverum narrates vignettes from his daily existence, as if he’s documenting an ongoing conversation with himself, often in a way that feels unfiltered. That’s not to say it is unexamined. On the contrary, Elverum over the past few years has become a regular practitioner of meditation, which emphasizes mindfulness. His daily routine has perhaps brought him a greater sense of equanimity about the nature of impermanence—a subject in which he is well-versed.
Night Palace is more even-keeled than the raw, shell-shocked dread of 2017’s A Crow Looked at Me, or the wounded resignation of 2019’s Lost Wisdom, pt. 2, with Julie Doiron. Though these songs are clearly autobiographical, he is an observer as much as a protagonist, watching even as he strives to embrace the life he has to the fullest extent he can. He’s come far enough to turn his focus outward here and there, musing on living year-round on an island full of vacation homes on “November Rain” (not a Guns N’ Roses cover) or the American tendency to downplay a legacy of racism and genocide on “Non-Metaphorical Decolonization.”
On tracks that last from as little as 53 seconds to longer than 12 minutes, Elverum threads his observations through a range of sounds, nearly all of which he played and recorded himself. “Non-Metaphorical Decolonization” starts with two minutes of churning punk that gives way to quiet vocals and subtle keys before erupting again at the end. Elsewhere, there are ringing guitars and a muscular rhythm section on “Huge Fire,” an avalanche of noise on “Wind & Fog,” quiet, unstructured textures of guitar and keyboards on “I Walk” and drifting instrumental creaks and groans and what sounds like wind on “Demolition.” Often his vocals meander along beneath the soundscapes, but fragile melodies occasionally emerge that seem to lay bare Elverum’s soul in a way that even his most bracing lyrics don’t.
Those songs—“Broom of Wind,” “November Rain” and album closer “I Need New Eyes” among them—are what make Night Palace into something worth revisiting, something more intriguing than a string of highly detailed journal entries. Having found a measure of peace within himself, Elverum is figuring out how he wants to re-engage with the world. It’s a deeply personal, idiosyncratic journey that doesn’t always seem to welcome onlookers. When it does, though, the glimpses he affords us are fascinating.
Eric R. Danton has been contributing to Paste since 2013. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Pitchfork, among other publications. He writes Freak Scene, a newsletter about music in Western Massachusetts and Connecticut.
