In 2007, Matthew Houck a.k.a. Phosphorescent released possibly the most haunting record of the year. From within Pride‘s rustic, psychedelic eeriness emerged a beautifully elegant beast. Its songs whispered like an unsettling wind and wrapped their brisk tendrils around the listener’s heart, pulling him or her deeper into the album’s emotional abyss.
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n 2007, Matthew Houck a.k.a. Phosphorescent released possibly the most haunting record of the year. From within Pride‘s rustic, psychedelic eeriness emerged a beautifully elegant beast. Its songs whispered like an unsettling wind and wrapped their brisk tendrils around the listener’s heart, pulling him or her deeper into the album’s emotional abyss. It was an astonishing progression from the stripped down folk rock of Aw Come Aw Wry, one that propelled Phosphorescent into the relative limelight and a tour that saw him and his band reinvent their fare into woozy, bar-rock.
After witnessing this interpretation in a live setting, it’s little surprise that Matthew Houck chose to pay tribute to the songs of Willie Nelson with an album of covers entitled, For Willie. A play on Willie’s own homage to Lefty Frisell, Phosphorescent’s second release on Dead Oceans finds him harnessing the hazy country vibe that Willie loved so much and inserting his own ramshackle rebelliousness into the equation. “Reasons to Quit” is an apt response to the downtrodden pining found in Pride‘s “Cocaine Lights.” It is merely one of the moments on For Willie when Houck and his idol seem to share much in common. If the world were fair, they’d also achieve similar success.
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