An Evening With: Phosphorescent

As Phosphorescent, singer/songwriter Mathew Houck embarked on a slow-burning journey that saw his music rise from dusty homespun albums to critically lauded and internationally recognised songs as he pushed on through the years.

The albums he released in the late 2000s and early 2010s were gregarious affairs; volleys of horns and dust clouds of guitars, sound almost like a party, one that grew wilder as Houck took an unruly, purposefully unrehearsed band on tour with him. While still touched by the woozy, ungrounded approach of the earlier albums, his later songwriting has been hookier and more focused, beginning a move away from experimental urges and into more polished material that would continue with subsequent albums.

“I got tired of sadness/ I got tired of all the madness/ I got tired of bein’ a badass all the time,” Houck sings on “Revelator,” the opener and title track of his latest Phosphorescent album. Houck was actively looking for something new, an epiphany, when the old ways stopped working. And just as the album Revelator only revealed itself to its author along the way, so too did real life revelations take their time answering the plaintive mission statement with which Houck reintroduces Phosphorescent.