Mount Eerie: Night Palace

Anyone who has suffered the same trauma as Phil Elverum will know that listening to A Crow Looked At Me and Now Only is like holding up a mirror to your soul.

Both albums jarring and harrowing in equal measure, not just leaving indelible marks, but also challenging most listeners to share the burden of Elverum losing his wife, Geneviève Castrée, who passed away in 2016 of pancreatic cancer. For the few who have experienced the same loss as Elverum, these albums excavate to even further depths, and despite being released six and seven years ago respectively, both still contain that same, immeasurable emotional weight. They always will.

While A Crow Looked At Me and Now Only were cases of Elverum revealing his trauma in fiercely diaristic ways, along with Lost Wisdom, Pt.2 (the album featuring Eric’s Trip’s Julie Doiran that centred on Elverum’s brief marriage to actress, Michelle Williams), Night Palace is an album that welcomes the songwriter viewing the world through a slightly clearer lens.

With the benefit of hindsight, Elverum’s Microphones in 2020 felt like the conduit between Mount Eerie’s recent past and the present. While there is a new sense of hope that permeates throughout Night Palace, expectedly, there’s trauma residue that drips into these songs. On Myths Come True, Pt. 2, Elverum sings, “Here I am steel feeling my way through the dark for you”. Again, anyone who has suffered the same trauma knows that it will never leave you. The wounds run too deep, leaving scars that may fade in time but will forever remain.

Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked At Me and Now Only – tackling bereavement and mental health

Sonically, for the most part, Night Palace sees Elverum moving on from the skeletal woodsy threads that ran through the above-mentioned releases for something more electric. Folk music for cathedrals and not campfires, and it’s evident from the first note that Night Palace is an unbridled tour-de-force. A ‘best of’, panoramic version of Mount Eerie that slowly unravels as a reset album. Something that opens up to the future frontiers Elverum will explore in time.

The opening title track, like a storm surge as piercing, laser beam drones rain hell from the sky. “I talk back to birds way more than I used to,” he sings, recalling passages of A Crow Looked At Me. And it’s the only time. I Saw Another Bird is quintessential Mount Eerie, with epic swells of noise capturing the same dynamism as Ocean’s Roar.

There’s plenty more of that, as Elverum travels across the Mount Eerie sound world. The hooping bass lines of Huge Fire, like early ’70s blues worn deep into the grooves. On Breaths and November Rain, he smashes together electric folk with the seamless chaos of free rock and the sweltering echoes of black metal. Meanwhile, Writing Poems is an expertly, deconstructed song that can be traced all the way back to the origins of indie-rock; the vestiges also dotted throughout the beautiful Broom of Wind and I Walk.

And while there are vignettes of the earthy folk that dominated Now Only (Swallowed Alive, Blurred World), on (soft air) and I Heard Whales, Elverum explores the ‘spirit world’, with stories told through sound. Sonically, both could have appeared on The Microphones’ The Glow Pt. 2, but thematically it connects the dots between human and environment, where vast open space and locality play crucial roles.

Holy Sons: Dread

So too politics. Along with November Rain, Non-Metaphorical Decolonization and Demolition are songs where Elverum has never been so overtly political, making the spirit world he creates on Night Palace one that feels like a refuge. And with the events that have unfolded over the past two weeks, this world grows more hospitable, with a wandering, escapist superiority likened to a gateway.

For those new to his music, that’s exactly what Night Palace is, covering a broad range of what Elverum has given us over the years as well as introducing new facets (the autotune tinged I Spoke with a Fish).

As with all artists framing certain periods of time, it’s Wind and Fog parts 1 and 2 that are the most telling passages throughout Night Palace. A spirit introduced through sound, forming as a composite that reveals all that Elverum has lost. It’s another reminder of grief and how it shifts from one day to the next. Overwhelming at times whilst stifled at others, but it will never leave, ultimately changing you as person. The version of your past, different in the present. Despite moving on, you can never forget that past, and Elverum’s vessel to reflect is through song.

This is what makes Mount Eerie so powerful. The sheer, naked honesty that runs as deep as the lo-fi touchstones that came before him in Doiran, Lou Barlow, and even Holy Sons. Anything less would make the 2024 version of Mount Eerie void, and Night Palace is anything but, as Elverum expresses and frames his reality as poignant as ever.

Night Palace is out now via Elverum & Sun. Purchase from Bandcamp.