Phosphorescent
To Willie
4.5 of 5 stars
The music of Phosphorescent is best enjoyed late at night. After wrestling with sleep for a few hours the tender yet pained voice of lead man Matthew Houck has an almost intoxicating quality.
Floating over shakers plinking keys and mournful strums Phosphorescent often takes the shape of a weekend bender personified through sonic form.
With that said it makes sense that Houck's latest a tender tribute to Willie Nelson would work so well. To Willie is a covers album by definition but Houck owns the songs in such a way that they quickly become his own.
For the disc's 11 tracks he's dug deep into Nelson's catalogue eschewing the obvious hits in favor of the drinking songs" the praying songs and the ""too sick to pray"" songs. These songs have lives of their own" with characters and stories that combine pain" regret and lapsed faith.
Houck does these songs like he's lived them. When he opens the record with ""Reasons to Quit" an old Merle Haggard and Nelson song that kicks off with the declaration Reasons to quit/The coke (Nelson sang smoke) and booze don't do me like before/I'm hardly ever sober and my old friends don't come around here anymore" you feel it, and more importantly, you believe him.
Houck has lived with these songs and knows them inside and out, which is, of course, what makes this record such a success.
In recent years, Nelson's image has been turned into a sort of caricature: a long haired aged hippie who has become the butt of jokes after a few drug possession arrests,.It would be easy to lose sight of what a true songwriting talent Nelson really is.
When Phosphorescent takes on these songs, there's no denying their power.
Houck has referred to this project as a musical love letter"" to one of his heroes" and that's exactly what it is.
Having established himself as an important and dynamic voice Houck now has the luxury of having a terrific label (Dead Oceans) to release this love letter that otherwise may have just been tucked away in a drawer deemed too private and a little too beautiful to see the light of day.
It's an aching tribute to hard living Saturday sin mixed with the Sunday repentance tradition of country music created by a man who sounds like he's sitting in his bedroom staring out the window strumming and singing with a few empty bottles on the dresser trying to come to grips with his lack of sleep lapse in faith and surplus of sin.
Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu
