Phil Elverum’s Night Palace is a sprawling, ambitious double album that’s both deeply personal and profoundly universal. Spanning 26 tracks and clocking in at 80 minutes, it’s an expansive invitation into Elverum’s mind: reflective, poetic, and self-aware. Throughout Night Palace, Elverum comments on his own history as a songwriter, revisiting past themes and questioning the conclusions he once drew, making the album a meta-commentary on the process of being an artist - an acknowledgement of change, growth, and the inevitable doubts that arise when reflecting on one’s earlier self.

At once tender and furious, balancing a reverence of the natural world with a biting critique of humanity’s insularity and disregard for the planet, the album covers vast emotional terrain, balancing stripped-back intimacy with expansive scope.

The lyric “And so what if no one ever finds this notebook,” on the title track encapsulates the central theme of impermanence stretching throughout the album. Steeped in reflection, the 26 tracks meditate on the transient nature of existence, our fleeting relationship with the planet, and the contradictions of being human. Elverum revisits old ideas, questioning whether he was ever right in the conclusions he once drew, and folds these doubts into a larger conversation about art, life, and the responsibility we have to each other and the earth. At its heart, Night Palace is about recognizing that nothing truly belongs to us. Tracks like “Non-Metaphorical Decolonization” confront our sense of ownership - over land, history, and even nature itself - juxtaposing intimate, poetic lyrics with a biting critique of insular thinking. Elverum’s reverence for nature shines throughout, tempered by a simmering rage toward the complacency of middle-class comforts and the destruction they perpetuate.

The message is clear: we are all living on borrowed time and borrowed land, and yet so many refuse to acknowledge it.

Some tracks feel meticulously crafted, while others barely linger, like fleeting thoughts that dissipate as quickly as they arrive, inviting us to sit with questions rather than offering easy answers. Despite its weighty subject matter, the album never feels overbearing, instead drawing us in with tender, lo-fi arrangements, balancing raw intimacy with expansive ambition.

Night Palace is as much about the process of questioning as it is about the answers - or lack thereof. It’s a deeply human album, one that embraces the contradictions of rage and gentleness, reflection and uncertainty, all wrapped in music so intimate and evocative - it’s a masterpiece.