Pages tagged “phosphorescent”

Last Wednesday night, a blue-collar hero went down in history. Toledo, Ohio’s own Joe Wurzelbacher—aka “Joe the Plumber”—was invoked no less than 26 times, making him more central to the third presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama than anything else, including taxes, education, the war, terrorism, the environment and energy independence.

Seeing as how a playlist about plumbers would’ve been pretty short, today’s Current Events megamix will focus simply on great songs about guys named Joe. Here’s to you, plumber man!

Phosphorescent, the mysterious Brooklyn, N.Y. (by way of Athens, Ga.) folk/Americana/gothic songster Matthew Houck, is bringing his natural glow to a slew of U.S. tour stops. Houck and a collection of rotating band members will be joined by North Carolina's hypnotic Bowerbirds, winding through the country until March, their final destination this year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

Houck and Co. released Phosphorescent's latest, Pride, on Oct. 23, and it earned the group a Band of the Week honor from Paste. Pride was Houck's third full-length, his first for Dead Oceans, and his best-received record so far.

Dates:

February
2 - Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Union Pool w/ Dodos
8 - Alfred, N.Y. @ Terra Cotta Coffee House
26 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ Johnny Brenda's *
27 - Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Union Hall *
29 - New York, N.Y. @ Mercury Lounge *

March
1 - Northampton, Mass. @ Iron Horse *
3 - Bloomington, Ind. @ Waldron Arts Center *
4 - Chicago, Ill. @ Schuba's *
5 - Minneapolis, Minn. @ First Avenue *
6 - Omaha, Neb. @ Slowdown *
7 - Lawrence, Kan. @ Jackpot *
8 - Norman, Okla. @ Opolis %
10 - Dallas, Texas @ Good Records 7PM (free instore, solo performance)
10 - Dallas, Texas @ Cavern %
12-15 - Austin, Texas @ SXSW

* - w/ Bowerbirds
% - w/ Bowerbirds and Bodies of Water

Related links:
DeadOceans.com
Phosphorescent on MySpace
Paste: Phosphorescent's Aw Come Aw Wry

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Fun Fact: The London Evening Standard called Phosphorescent principal songwriter Matthew Houck “the most significant American in his field since Kurt Cobain.”
Why It’s Worth Watching: Brimming with lush harmonies, groaning acoustic textures and vivid storytelling, Phosphorescent is what Brian Wilson would have sounded like had he grown up in the South against a backdrop of Appalachian folk and gospel variants.
For Fans Of: Will Oldham, Vic Chesnutt, Akron/Family

Considering that we now live in the era of overnight sensations, when but a few enthusiastic bloggers can launch a band from basement anonymity to burgeoning international fame, it’s easy to forget that sometimes really great acts still struggle to find their audience. For whatever reason, Phosphorescent has been one of those groups, with main songwriter Matthew Houck left to wonder just why his band’s richly organic and surreal Americana fell between the cracks when less distinctive buzz bands collapsed under their own wave of hype. With Pride, Houck is back to say that he’s done with modesty.

One-man freakfolk symphony bleeds elegant ballads for post-modern world

Phosphorescent’s sole official member, Matthew Houck, is as close to a painter as a musician can be. He spills worlds of oil and watercolor from his earthy sonic palette—fuzzy, droning, slo-rock soul with Otis Redding horn swells, drunken mariachi waltzes, and pedal steel cascading like the feathery hair of some sad-eyed princess time forgot. He adds tambourines that rattle like loose change, dabs of late-1800s west-of-the-Mississippi saloon piano, and swirling angelic choirs of grace and doom. Ghosts & Watermelons & Beer & Nowhere Roads, golden cantatas that ?utter into dreams without a whisper. Skin-warming sunshine, devoured hearts of the past, fields of glowing wheat harvested in the mind. Houck—all quivering, daydreamy vocals and scattershot charm—gives life to tiny universes in his music, some lasting an entire song-cycle, others living unnoticed between the beats and scattered string plucks, unfolding amidst the distant thunderclaps and drizzling winter rain.

The London Evening Standard said of Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck, “He may prove to be the most significant American in his field since Kurt Cobain." Comparisons to the brooding grunge messiah always seem a touch overwrought, but here it’s surprisingly apt. Reminiscent of Cobain’s haunted crooning during the band’s Unplugged in New York performance, Houck’s cracked, faltering vocals are forever threatening to shatter beneath the weight of some frustrating bliss, sorrow or inscrutable commingling of the two. Phosphorescent’s follow-up to 2003’s frighteningly brilliant A Hundred Times Or More, contains six more plaintive prayer-songs from the Old (Oldham?) Spooky South via one part-time college town, part-time mini music Mecca in northeast Georgia.

“Toes Out To Sea,” a melancholic, piano-accented reverie born of lethargic afterglow, introduces listeners to Houck’s stark poeticism: “Your pursed lips blow / Perfect O / As you break your body / Like waves onto me.” Glittering sadness runs like webbing veins of gold through this record—a resigned, suicidal stillness punctuated with the flickering glow of a dim romantic’s tentative, guarded optimism. In the droning organ-soaked “All Of It, All,” Houck reminds us, “The thing about lifetimes / Is sometimes you have to be cruel / It’s sad that it’s sad / But don’t let that dampen you / No, to live you must die / Yes, and more than one time / You must kiss it goodbye.”

Flight’s not all dirge, death, dismemberment and drunken 4 a.m. lamentations, however. The album’s centerpiece, a rousing sing-along “When We Fall” bounces fitfully along to another kind of drunkenness: the dizzying jubilant variety. Barroom piano, impromptu cheers and stein-clinking background singing, tambourine, foot-stomping, hand claps and horns, all adorning a beautiful lyric: “The sky tonight at sundown / Looked like God himself / Feeding diamonds to his horses made of gold.” If we are to believe Will Oldham is truly a “prince” (as his sometime-moniker claims), there must be a king on some throne somewhere. That throne just may reside in Athens, Ga. And it’s not inhabited by Patterson Hood, but his haunted highness Matthew Houck.