LOCATE S,1 + NIGHT PALACE

Night Palace’s debut album Diving Rings is a shocking alchemy: aching nostalgia meets frothy anticipation of what’s beyond the garden wall. Tantalizing pop melodies take wing with lush instrumentation and glimmers of psychedelia, weaving reedy arrangements for songwriter Avery Draut’s intimately delivered vocals to light upon. It’s hard to believe the album is not a soundtrack to another world; you find yourself picturing it: a moonlit-gilded diorama of Draut’s dreams and memories.

Growing up, Draut would wake to her parents blasting Court and Spark or Nilsson Schmilsson, dancing around the living room, and riling the dogs. At school, in the indie-music-lore-steeped college town of Athens, Georgia she studied classical voice. After five years of fruitful and intensive opera performance, she found a Lowrey Magic Genie™ electric organ at the thrift store. Enchanted by its sound, she sat down for the first time to write songs of her own: the songs that would become Diving Rings.

Out last April on Park the Van Records, the debut garnered a mention on NPR’s All Songs Considered Podcast, and was highlighted in AllMusic’s Best of 2022:

“The distant sweetness of “Into the Wake, Mystified” calls to mind both the indie pop catchiness of Alvvays and the auras of less earthbound performers like Jane Weaver or Cate Le Bon. An album of songs this strong presented in a straightforward rock instrumentation would be fine on its own, but Diving Rings digs deeper through exploring ambitious chamber pop arrangements and left turns into moments of smooth sophistication. This can take the form of the fantastical string section that shows up in “Enjoy the Moon!” (a song that sounds like a lost Pet Sounds track played by Broadcast) or the slick sax solos, mystical woodwind sections, and coy synth sounds that appear out of nowhere intermittently throughout the album…Draut and her collaborators push Diving Rings past being simply a solid record to create a weird and exciting dream world that doesn’t fit neatly in any dimension other than its own.”