He takes every good musical idea from his entire career and smashes them all together to create something even greater than the sum of its parts. Musical experiments with distortion far beyond the limits of usual good taste, poignant, direct lyrics, and some outright kickass rock songs.
Also includes by far the funniest musical joke of his entire career at the end of "I Spoke With a Fish."
phil elverum is an master of his craft, undeniably a songwriter on the level of his contemporaries david berman and john darnielle. much like those two, his voice is always a welcome joy in my life.
It feels cliche to call an artist's latest release the culmination of their body of work, but Night Palace truly feels like the album of sounds, words, and emotions that Phil Elverum has been steadily building toward for twenty years. Not quite a fully realized masterpiece, but certainly closer than he's been in a long long time. This is the kind of album that the listener sits with for years and years, getting lost exploring its winding paths and narrowest tributaries time and time again, following the trails and staring off into the distance and letting its ice cold breeze permeate the core of your being in small doses. The common threads between nature and noise have never been clearer.… More
Undeniably a very good album with some enjoyable songs but I can't avoid thinking whether anybody actually listens to this kind of records more than a couple of times because of their length and the need to be in the right mood.