Phosphorescent, or Matthew Houck as his mother (presumably) calls him, has always been something of an also-ran. He belongs to a loose group of American musicians who make earnest guitar-based music – they do not subscribe to contemporary musical trends and flavours-of-the-month, but are characterised by a workmanlike approach to their craft, and are noticeably older than many of the bands they share festival bills with. I am referring to artists such as The Walkmen, The
National, Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes. The former two bands sharing a veteran- like status with Huock (who has been on-the-scene, as it were, since 2001 under various guises) and the latter sharing more aesthetic-based similarities. However, Phosphorescent has never quite received the same critical or commercial acclaim as these artists. Where they are lauded in the press and sell out venues with capacities of two-thousand plus, Phosphorescent has merely plugged away in the background releasing solid but unbrilliant records every two years to minimal fanfare. If this point needed stressing, The National even gave him an almost consolatory support slot on their most recent UK tour.
You could say he’s been overlooked, but he’s never really separated himself from his contemporaries; never quite finding the distinctive voice that made these bands so successful – his work has never been bad, just not quite good enough. In this context, Muchacho is something of a landmark for Huock. Muchacho is a deeply felt, well-crafted record that should bring the once also- ran to the head of the pack a la Kelly Holmes in the 2004 800m Olympic final. Four hundred meters in, you’d almost written her off as an admirable contender who did her best but fell slightly short, but Houck, like Holmes, has pulled a brilliant artistic victory from what looked destined from the off to be a middle-of-the-pack finish.
‘Mucacho’ is essentially a break up album. But there are no scathing Taylor Swift-like accusations here – the topic up for examination is Huock himself. He portrays a brilliantly human anxiety throughout the album of an individual who, after the fallout of a relationship, has only themself to battle with, reconstruct and move on. The album opens with ‘Sun, Arise!’, and is an immediate announcement of artistic departure. Huock’s voice is layered and harmonised and reaches an emotive majesty matched only by the aforementioned Fleet Foxes – but it is from here where he steps out of the shadow of his contemporaries and own former work. The sparse vocal is underscored by an equally minimal looping electronic riff. On first listen it feels irritatingly incongruous, but on repeat there is a sense of deliberate construction in the very artifice of the sound in contrast with the deeply human voice in the song and his earlier more organic-sounding work.
This electronic motif appears again on the next track ‘Song For Zula’ in which a processed string section loops over a delay-laden drumbeat whilst Houck intones ‘I saw love disfigure me/ Into something I am not recognising’ – the topic is here first clearly stated. But he’s not want to wallow, and on the next verse redemptively states ‘I will not lay like this for days now upon end/ You will not see me fall, nor see me struggle to stand’ the sentiment is almost akin to Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ but his delivery is understated and measured. There is a profound humanity to the song, a sense of battling with himself and finding progression.
This self-conquering is the key to the album; recurring on the next track ‘Right On/Ride On’ where he comes across with the swaggering bravado of Caleb Followill - grunting and screeching in turn with out of animalistic lust. The refrain, however, betrays an emotional complexity that the Kings of Leon never reached. Houck repeats ‘Take your greedy hands… put them on me’ throughout the song – at first he is lascivious and brash, but by the end his tone is self-reproachful and uncertain as he realises he is returning to a lover whose ‘greedy hands’ are not the problem but the issue is his tolerance of her greed. He at first turns outward and then looks back upon himself again in the album’s most immediate track ‘A Charm/ A Blade’. The song opens understatedly, and Huock becomes despairingly, and sickeningly, self-pitying – finally whispering to his implied lover ‘This can’t be what you want’. As his self-pity becomes pitiful itself, a fanfare of trumpets erupts, and the chorus explodes with Huock joyfully shouting ‘It’s a charm, it’s a blade’. He addresses the nature of a breakup as necessarily a process of redemption and self realisation as the song swings wildly from despair to elation. It becomes apparent that the repeated invocation that ‘this can’t be what you want’ is addressed to himself the second time round, and this self realisation is a cue for a whimsical rockabilly glissando and he bursts into boundless optimism again.
Along with the thematic unity and development, the other great strength of the album is Huock’s astoundingly versatile voice. On ‘The Quotidian Beasts’ he howls like a wounded animal in a performance that is tortured but never tortuous, and his dynamism is then put to the test on the next track (‘Down to Go’) and succeeds as he cracks with uncertainty and – most importantly – genuine heartfelt conviction. The closing line of the song, and in many senses the album’s epithet, is this ‘you say, oh, you spin this heartache into gold, I suppose aint got much choice now’. Faced with no other option, Houck resolves to use his creative process to move himself forward from the shards of his relationship.
The album is bookended by ‘Sun’s Arising’, counterpart to the opener ‘Sun, Arise!’, but it is more of a response than a reprise. The encompassing of the album by these two tracks serves to symbolise the completion of the redemptive process – as the title suggests he is no longer willing a new dawn to come but watching it happen. The artificial and initially alienating keyboard loops of the opener have been replaced by the familiar warmth of a guitar, representing some sort of self-reconciliation and completing the journey.
Whilst the album is a brilliantly realised and executed work, it still occasionally falls foul of the pedestrian tendencies of his earlier work. ‘Terror in the Canyon’ in particular feels extraneous. It contributes nothing to the album’s narrative process, is reliant upon clichéd lyricism and is marred by needlessly bombastic orchestration that verges on self-parody. Yet its position on the tracklisting at four out of ten situates it as a disappointment that only sets up the opportunity of a triumphant comeback. The sublime central tale of the lover destroyed who finds inner resolve and comes out on top ultimately, if unintentionally, mirrors the process of its own creation. You always root for the underdog.
his surname is spelt Houck