Fronted by Matthew Houck, Phosphorescent’s last full-length Here’s To Taking It Easy was released almost over a year ago. Having toured relentlessly in support of their past record, the Brooklyn band are set to return to the UK once more for a smattering of live dates in the summer.

May
30 – Thekla, Bristol
31 – Deaf Institute, Manchester

June
04 – Stereo, Glasgow
07 – Heaven, London

Tickets are on sale now.

The line up for All Tomorrow’s Parties’ stage at this year’s Primavera Sound Festival has finally been revealed. Curated by ATP since 2007, the bands set to grace the stage this year are as follows:

The Album Leaf
Autolux
Broadcast
Caribou
Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500
Factory Floor
Half Japanese
Islet
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Lichens
Low
Money Mark
Oneohtrix Point Never
Phosphorescent
Pissed Jeans
Salem
Seefeel
Shellac
Tennis
Wolf People
Yuck

This Saturday is the last day you can buy a full festival ticket for 150€ (+ booking fee) before the price rises. Primavera Sound runs May 26-28 in Barcelona, Spain.

It’s been a good twelve months for Phosphorescent. As the end of year polls came flooding in towards the end of 2010, a whole load of praise was heaped on Here’s to Taking it Easy (No.25 in the TLOBF 2010 list, No. 5 in the Rough Trade Shops list). In the eight months since it was released in May, it’s become a firm favourite with critics and fans alike. Matthew Houck is naturally happy about this “I feel great about that. I worked hard on it” he says and agrees that it’s good to get the recognition.

Looking the very picture of laidback cool only an hour before he and his band take to the stage at Brixton Academy in support of The National, he’s excited about the show, but also very keen to get home. One of the drawbacks of having a successful year is that touring begins to take a toll. “We’ve been out eight months this year; eight months we’ve been away from home” he says, not obviously sounding like it’s a great hardship, so does he like life on the road? “I used to like it a bit more than now. Now I cherish the ability to be at home. I’m looking forward to slowing down. We’re going home in a week, I can’t wait for that.”

Phosphorescent are now performing to some of the biggest indoor crowds they’ve played all year and are certainly benefiting from The National’s massive rise in popularity. The tour is going well, and Phosphorescent are impressing the National’s fans. Matthew and the band have already played large venues this year in support of a rather less obvious fan – David Gray. The bobbing-headed singer songwriter may be much derided over here, but Houck is relaxed about the lack of cool factor. He’s happy that Gray’s a fan of his music. His love of the previous Phosphorescent album Pride led Gray to email, asking them out on the road. Matthew was happy to accept and by his account it was all good. “People like music” he diplomatically suggests.

The first time I saw Phosphorescent play it was in support of Akron/Family at Cargo three years ago. That evening Houck ended his solo set with a intense version of a song called ‘The Party’s Over’, which I later discovered was a Willie Nelson song. It was the first indication I had of his love for Nelson’s music, but I wouldn’t have expected a whole album of Willie covers to follow a year or so later. So how did To Willie come about? “It was kind of organic”, Matthew offers “basically all the songs on that record were favourites of mine for a long time, and I’d play them all now and again at my shows. When I saw the record [Nelson] put out called To Lefty from Willie, a light bulb went on and I thought ‘To Willie’! The idea came just like that”. It was easy choosing which songs too “There wasn’t a selection process. Once I knew I was going to do that record I knew what the eleven songs were.” Has Willie Nelson heard it though? “Yeah” Matthew smiles “a few months after it came out, Willie called my cellphone out of nowhere” and gave him the thumbs up. “It was a total honour.”

Given that Here’s To Taking It Easy continues in a similar countryfied vein, the obvious question is how much did To Willie influence what happened next. Houck reflects “It influenced it a little bit. The band is the same, so there’s a natural progression. The song ‘Heaven Sitting Down’ sounds like a Willie Nelson song, because I wrote it during the recording of To Willie – it just crept in there. I think that there’s been a little bit of a miscalculation in the press – the main thing that they picked up is that these records are different from what I did before, and I guess that Pride was the first record that most people heard. I’m aware that I put out two records that are country-ish but I think that the next record is going to veer away from all that. Phosphorescent is an album by album project. I like to find a vibe and spread it across the record.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

He’s right about the response to the nature of the past two albums. Certainly, there’s a shift in tone from the woozy late night reveries of Pride to the laidback country rockin’ of To Willie and Here’s To Taking it Easy.  But the interesting thing about Phosphorescent is the consistency throughout his recorded output. Onstage at End of the Road festival in September (“definitely the best festival we played this year”) the songs from Pride seemed perfectly comfortable dressed up in cowboy hat and spurs. And if anyone baulked at the horns when they first heard ‘It’s Hard to be Humble’ earlier in the year, they only had to look back to the 2004 album The Weight of Flight to hear more of those. The same record also has a cover of ‘My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys’, another Willie Nelson song. Phosphorescent is constantly evolving, but there’s a consistent thread running throughout. His songs evolve over time too “some of them drastically” he adds.

Phosphorescent is now a five-piece band, but it’s not always been so. Most of the earlier material was Houck on his own, writing, recording and performing. How did he make the move from being a solo artist to what’s happening now? “It happened really organically. There’s always been a strict division between the albums and live shows for Phosphorescent and I think that will be changing. A lot of the records I overdubbed myself and I don’t think that would be interesting live. I have the records in one world, and live shows in another. I enjoy having the celebration”

“I got the current band together for To Willie. Scott and Jesse and Jeffrey had been in and out of my band and on various tours but never totally worked out. But we started going after Pride and we gelled over a period of time. So when realised I was going to make To Willie, I knew I would do it with them. They’re amazing musicians.” This is all undoubtedly true, but can he see himself going back to solo performing again? “Yeah. You can only do one thing at a time, but yeah, I think I could.” Despite his uncertainty about that, Houck’s point about the difference between live and studio Phosphorescent is underlined by the fact that each album is worked out by Matthew alone, before drawing on the expertise of the wider band; “The writing and recording process is usually starts as a solo thing. It can take a long time and it’s a solitary endeavour, but then if I need a guitar part played out, I know I’ve got one of the best guitarists around that I can go to for that”

Matthew’s already mentioned a possible new direction on his next album, so has he started working on it yet? “I’ve done a little bit of recording but it’s mostly been just writing.” Given that he’s spent so much time on the road this past year, has he been writing whilst on tour? He shakes his head “I can’t write on the road. You can write snippets of stuff, but there’s just so much happening you need moments to gather your thoughts. I’ve got at least two records I want to make. Different records. I can’t wait to get back into the studio and get to work. I’m ready. If it was up to me, I’d like to make them real fast and get them out there.”

I ask what he’s listening to at the moment, perhaps to get an idea of where he might go next. The answer is a little surprising “I’ve been listening to a lot of hip hop and R’n’B. and also a lot of electronic stuff; more textured weird stuff. On tour we’re all listening to a lot of hip hop.” He doesn’t seem to be bullshitting either, because later in the band’s dressing room, hip-hop beats are indeed blasting out of a computer.

Finally, after the now-legendary tour bus theft incident in Brooklyn in July, I can’t resist asking how secure the tour van is these days. “Very secure” he laughs. It’s still incredible that the van was found intact later with nothing stolen. It must have been unbelievable to get all the stuff back. “Everything was still there. It was amazing” he recalls “it was the craziest rollercoaster of four days.”

And with that I leave him to get ready for the show. Onstage an hour or so later, once their set gets going, it becomes clear that Phosphorescent are already moving on. If the aforementioned End of the Road set was very in the Willie Nelson vein, this one is much more Neil Young. Not the Young of Harvest, but the searing guitars of Weld. It’s an awesome performance, Phosphorescent turned up to 11, which proves, as if it was needed, that wherever Houck goes next, whether it be country, hip-hop, guitar noise or experimental electronica, it’s going to be interesting and exciting. But expect there to be something reassuringly familiar about it as well.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Phosphorescent: ‘The Mermaid Parade’

Phosphorescent’s UK tour started last night, coinciding with the re-release of the rather splendid album Here’s To Taking It Easy through Dead Oceans. Full details of the tour are below, with support by Timber Timbre.

September
07 Bristol Thekla
08 London Scala
10 Bestival Isle of Wight
11 End of the Road
12 Brighton Komedia

Including last year’s set of Willie Nelson covers, this is Matthew Houck’s fifth album release under the Phosphorescent moniker.  After that enjoyable and fitting tribute this sees him once more presenting his own material (the first since 2007’s Pride), material which – happily – seems to be every bit as strong as before.

Don’t let the upbeat title mislead you though.  This is still Houck in hard-drinking, loving-and-losing, tortured and lovelorn mode, and all the better for it. Possessing a voice capable of depicting broken hearts, weary acceptances, wild times and tears, it would be criminal not to use its full scope to describe these emotions.  So we see protagonists in every mood, from ‘It’s Hard To Be Humble”’s cocksure defiance, to the downbeat fatalism of ‘Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me Foolishly)’ – “Well apart from the things I touched / Nothing got broke all that much”. Love (chiefly lost) is a major theme, particularly in the three song sequence of ‘Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me Foolishly)’, ‘We’ll Be Here Soon’, and ‘The Mermaid Parade’.  Houck’s vocal is at its most wistful, yearning and gorgeous on ‘We’ll Be Here Soon’ and the long, sad, elegiac ‘Los Angeles’ – the regret and sorrow audible in every note.

Another of the joys of this album rests in the intelligent, pithy lyricism. Couplets like “If I’m talkin’ to you mister, then you’d best be writin’ down what I say / If you’re talking to me like that then  you’d best be quickly walking away” from the excellent, jaunty yet still edgy opening track ‘It’s Hard To Be Humble..’ or the quite simply beautiful “Our hearts were on fire only two weeks ago / And our bodies were like live wires, down on the beach in Mexico” (‘The Mermaid Parade’) succeed in conveying a whole song’s worth of meaning in just a couple of lines, instantly drawing the listener into their world.

All this is accompanied by some lovely country music. Steel pedals wail, guitars and banjos are plucked and twang, tambourines rattle – always somehow augmenting and underlying the very human lyrical and emotional content.  ‘Los Angeles’ has a lusher, fuller, richer musical sound which swells and flows, and works well as the album closer.

Of the many highlights, particularly great are ‘It’s Hard To Be Humble…’, the laconic-cowboy-rhythm-meets-resignation-and-heartbreak of ‘Nothing Was Stolen…’, ‘I Don’t Care If There’s Cursing’ (nihilism! with brilliant rhymes!) and ‘Heaven Sittin’ Down’, reminiscent of another great modern country track, the Broken Family Band’s ‘Devil In The Detail’.  Probably best of all though is ‘The Mermaid Parade’, a story of the regret left behind after a relationship fails and ends (“And our two years of marriage / In two short weeks just somehow slipped away”), so realistic as to be heartrending, particularly in the repeated cries of “Oh, Amanda” or “Goddamn it, Amanda / Goddamn it all”. It’s enough, at times, to make the soft-hearted listener weep.

In short, then, this is a really amazing album.  Incredibly honest, very human, emotionally brave, musically coherent, with moments of real poetry.  Thoroughly recommended, with a tear in the eye.

All I have to do is think of Pride, Matthew Houck’s staggering second outing as Phosphorescent, and I get a lump wedged deep in my throat. Within the eight dark, meditative hymns lay a ghostly figure at large; haunting Houck’s deeply personal musings and rattling between every softly sung word. It carried the same emotional depth as Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago (self-released by Justin Vernon the same year) but perhaps didn’t possess the same commercial chops that led Vernon’s debut to become a worldwide phenomenon.

If Pride was the dark side of Houck’s alter-ego Phosphorescent, then Here’s To Taking It Easy – the new album due for release in May – is most certainly the light. Perhaps inspired by last year’s Willie Nelson covers record To Willie, Taking It Easy reveals a new country inspired direction for Houck.

Today’s Song Of The Day, “It’s Hard To Be Humble”, acts as a perfect introduction to the record.  Four to the floor drums, kick horns and a rip roaring pedal steel guitar recall Gram Parsons’ “Ooh Las Vegas”, Uncle Tupelo’s “Chickamauga” or Wilco’s “Monday” – three classic country tracks that boast Gram Parsons’ vivid image of a Cosmic American Music. A sound that many Americana acts try to emulate but few manage to execute without sounding like a cheap homage, or worse, a bad bar band.

“It’s Hard To Be Humble” is the Cosmic American Music that Gram Parsons fought so hard to achieve back in the late sixties. A cross-over of country, soul and rockabilly played with such aplomb and swagger all you need do is sit back and let the good times roll. After the heartache and demons that made up Pride, it’s really all you can do.

Phosphorescent: “It’s Hard to Be Humble (When You’re From Alabama)”

Phosphorescent, a.k.a. Matthew Houck, never shy of the “interesting cover version” here takes things one step further in releasing a complete “tribute album” to one artist: country music legend Willie Nelson.  The title seemingly a clever play on the title of Nelson’s own 1975 tribute album (To Lefty From Willie – an album of Lefty Frizell covers), Houck has wisely selected some of the lesser-known songs, neatly sidestepping the issue of listener over familiarity which can sometimes prove problematic on such endeavours.

And what a beautiful selection of songs it is.  For the listener, like me, who has not previously encountered much of Willie Nelson’s oeuvre, then the first thing that this album achieves is to make you very much want to explore his music further.  The tone is often world-weary, sometimes cynical, sometimes battle-hardened, but always moving and honest.  We meet Nelson/Houck in several different moods, though always with unmistakably the same voice.  We see him in unrepentant party mode on standout track ‘I Gotta Get Drunk’, defiantly singing “There’s a lot of doctors who tell me / I’ve gotta start slowing it down / But there’s more old drunks than there are old doctors / So I guess I’ll get me another round”; then as he tries to talk himself into abstention and sobriety on ‘Reasons To Quit’ (“The coke and booze don’t do me like before”), while at the same time admitting that those reasons “don’t outnumber all the reasons why“, with heartbreaking honesty and self-awareness.  He’s lovesick on ‘Heartaches of a Fool’, ‘The Last Thing I Needed (First Thing This Morning)’, and the affecting ‘Permanently Lonely’ – with bitter lyrics from Nelson, yet such a sad, beautiful delivery from Houck that you can practically taste the hurt and pain of the brokenhearted lover.   Hell, there’s even the obligatory religious references, in ‘Too Sick To Pray’, which managed to melt the flinty heart of this confirmed atheist (that’s what a Catholic upbringing will do to a girl…), with lines like “Never needed you more / Shoulda called you before / But I’ve been too sick to pray“.

The lyrical and musical compositions, though, are definitely only part of what make this album so special.  Equal weight must be given to Houck’s tuneful, gentle yet incredibly emotional delivery.  This is a voice that could make you yearn for things you didn’t know you would ever yearn for, and melt the faces of the Easter Island stone statues to gooey mush.  It is rare, indeed, that a covers album manages to meld together the songs being covered and the artist that is covering them so effectively – to the extent where it is now unquestionably going to seem strange and probably a little wrong when I track down and finally listen to the original versions.

In short then, this is an album that I would only hesitate to recommend to you if you were a) in the middle of a painful break-up (I’d advise you to save it until you are over the worst) b) trying to quit booze or drugs or c) an Easter Island stone statue.  To everyone else I would wholeheartedly encourage the embracing of these gorgeous, touching, warm and very very human songs.
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mp3:> Phosphorescent: ‘Reasons To Quit’ [via Stereogum]

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