Night Palace
ABOUT
Night Palace is lush, experimental pop that makes its mark with a slightly dark edge. On her debut album, songwriter Avery Draut guides us through a moonlit diorama of her dreams and heartbreaks, each song ebbing into the world of the next like a tide of vignettes.
Night Palace was born during Draut’s time at college in Athens, Georgia, where she explored visual art and theatre before concentrating on opera performance. During her freshman year, she and her best friend also started DJing at the college radio station WUOG 90.5fm, widening for her an enchanting portal into the Athens music scene that existed outside of the music school. After four years of intensive classical musical training and performances, she found herself in a moment of quiet, for what felt like the first time in her life. And in that quiet, she started to hear her own melodies.
At the same time, a Magic Genie electric organ appeared at the thrift store down the street from Draut’s house. She brought it home for $40 and sat down to write her very first songs. Beloved local paper Flagpole Magazine wrote of her early demos, “This pet project of lead singer Avery Draut has been a coming-out party for one of the greater creative minds in Athens.” Writer and musician Fred Thomas describes the 2022 debut album Diving Rings in an AllMusic Editors Choice review:
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…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…a weird and exciting dream world that doesn't fit neatly in any dimension other than its own.
Diving Rings has been highlighted by NPR’S All Songs Considered, Paste Magazine, Consequence, and Under the Radar. Night Palace have shared bills with acts including Sixpence None the Richer, of Montreal, Frankie Cosmos, Lonnie Holley, La Luz, Pearl & the Oysters, Squirrel Flower, and more. In 2024 they performed at NPR’s sold out Tiny Desk on the Road Atlanta tour stop.
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