story by Rebecca Raber


Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck is a hard man to get a hold of. Touring across the country and preaching the Southern Gothic gospel of his third full-length, Pride, Houck’s been on highways in remote parts of Texas without cell service, racing to venues without a moment to spare. There’s been little time or opportunity for him to reflect on his work. But as the Alabama native explained in his honeyed drawl during a rare late-night free moment on the road, Pride was a product of this sort of transient existence. Started last December, when he was still living in Athens, Georgia, the album was finished this spring after a few tours and a move to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he became housemates with some of the borough’s best musical talent. “I was living with Dave [Longstreth, from Dirty Projectors] and also Ray [Raposa] from Castanets and, God, about five other people, all of whom are in bands and are musicians,” he says. “And everybody was making their own records at that time in the house… It was a great year. We were always off in our own little rooms doing separate projects. But when you stepped down into the kitchen to get a beer, people were there, and I’m sure we talked about music and cross-pollination was probably happening. But it was certainly never explicit. We didn’t sit around jamming together, which is what I think some people think happens.”

Though he claims not to hear it himself, the album was clearly affected by its disparate birthplaces. It is, at once, pastoral and gritty, folksy and experimental, gently Southern and rubbed raw by the big city. But though its creation was interrupted by relocation and the rigors of the road, it is a coherent tour de force—a cracked, autumnal collection of candle-lit folk tales that are strung together by longing, regret and a search for salvation. And the emotions aren’t the only things that are naked. The meditative songs, despite their jagged, ramshackle percussion, swooning organs and tender acoustic guitars, seem spare, perhaps, because for the first time, Houck is the sole musician on the album. And, aside from a few guest vocalist turns provided by some of Houck’s famous friends and flatmates, most of the lush, ethereal harmonies were simply created by multi-tracking his own vulnerable, craggy warble on top of itself until it took on shades of femininity, soulfulness and grace. Pride, with its languid pacing, sunburnt melancholy and awe of the holiness that can be found in the everyday, would be a moving accomplishment had it taken a 20-piece chorus and full orchestra to create it, but as the product of basically just one man, it is triumph. “I think it’s an amazing record from start to finish,” says Houck, mediating on his own work. “I don’t get tired of it. I’ve listened to this record probably four thousand times and I still adore it.”



1. “A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise” (3:17)
Generally speaking, for Phosphorescent songs, most lines are pretty direct, and the lines that are obscure are that way on purpose. It's rarely done with the purpose of hiding direct meaning though. It's done with the intent of opening it up a little to be more inclusive and not so pinhole-specific. I feel like this song is pretty self-explanatory, but I could be wrong about that—so, overall this one is about taking it easy in a relationship. Also, [it] includes a little prayer for past relationships and their shortcomings. And not being too hard on anybody about that.


2. “Be Dark Night” (4:00)
I had been using layered voices already on previous records. [For this song] though, I decided to bring it to the forefront. I had a friend who was living in a turn-of-the-century corn mill building way out in rural Georgia. She was watching over this place for an older woman who normally lived there. This older woman was a collector of Native American rattles and drums and other Native American objects. All these beautiful medicine-man or ceremonial rattles [were] just sitting there, so I brought all of them to my house where I was recording and put them to use. They brought a certain magic, I think, to the proceedings and maybe even contributed heavily to the somber prayer-chant arrangements of songs like this one.


3. “Wolves” (6:14)
This was the first song I wrote while living with my girlfriend in an apartment in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. People seem to think this imagery is rustic or rural, and I suppose that's true, but it's not literal of course. All of it is metaphorical and, for me, [it] is very much a wintertime-[in]-New York City song. There really were wolves in the house. But then there always have been. At the time when I wrote that song they were showing themselves all the way. Bloody-mouthed, but still beautiful all the same.


4. “At Death, A Proclamation” (1:52)

You taped a high school marching band from inside your car for this song's percussion...
I don't know if it was a high-school band or what—maybe they were from the college, but yes, that is true. This was in Athens, Georgia. I was doing a decent amount of field recordings at that time, and I had my tape recorder with me when I happened to pass by a parking lot where they were practicing. I would say there were about 40 drummers. They sounded great, so I recorded them practicing that day and then, months later, used those drums as the frame for recording this song. And no, they didn't know I was taping them.

This song should be longer!
Well, it’s about the length of a regular pop song, isn’t it? But you only get one chorus… [It] did become a pretty sweet chorus, and I guess if I wanted to I could have gone in there and put another verse and back into the chorus, but I felt like it was so good the one time.


5. “The Waves At Night” (4:17)
The waltz cadence of this song actually sounds like waves lapping at the shore; do you plan those sorts of compositional elements beforehand?
No, at least not consciously. But a lot of that stuff really does happen behind the scenes, so to speak. I don't know where the line is between a conscious choice of craftsmanship [and] a subconscious [one]... I mean, I’ve never heard a song like “Waves At Night” before, but different parts of it remind me of all kinds of different things. There's one part that sounds, to me at least, like a classic country duet, like George Jones and Tammy Wynette. But I don't think anybody else probably thinks that. Liz Durrett sounds amazing on this track. She is truly one of my favorite singers of all time.


6. “My Dove, My Lamb” (9:25)
Lyrically, this song has got a lot going on... This is the only song where there is a choir. It really just so happened that one day I was working on this song and there were these four girls in the house where I was making the record, and all of them were really good singers and it was really like, “Oh, you guys should get on this thing!” It was the girls from the Dirty Projectors and two of their friends who happened to be there—both of whom sing amazingly—so we just got that together [on the fly]. And then, like an hour later, a couple of guys came over. It was kind of a busy house, and it was especially busy during that time… And they just kind of jumped in the room and we did some takes with them too. And my roommates got on it too. On other songs on the record, there are guest vocalists, too. Every instrument is played by me, but not every voice utterance is made by me. There’s the duet with Liz Durrett. And Jana Hunter is singing on that song, “Wolves.” There are other vocalists on the record, but most of the thick choir stuff is just me, with the exception of this song, where the choir is an actual choir.


7. “Cocaine Lights” (6:01)

This is one of the songs on Pride with the least ambiguous lyrics; how autobiographical is it?
This song is pretty direct, you're right. Originally it was going to open the album. Later it became clear that, together with the song “Pride,” it was meant to be the album closer. I guess, to be honest, it's pretty much exactly autobiographical.

It sounds like you woke up after a night of debauchery and just sat down at a piano and wrote it.
It did happen exactly that way, in terms of getting up and starting it. I didn’t finish it, though, in one sitting. I don’t remember when I finished it, actually. I specifically remember starting it, and I did write the majority of it then. But there were a couple things about it that weren’t clear that morning that became clear later on. I was even playing it live after I wrote it, before it was finished. I don’t think I knew how it resolved itself until later.


8. “Pride” (6:09)
It was mainly done in one take—the main frame of it—but then it got layered and layered and layered and layered... The very last sound that I mixed on the record was the ending of “Pride.” It closed it all out. I’m sure that was the longest song I worked on for this record. There are subtleties that took a really long time to get right because there are so many layers and certain [sounds] drift in and out. So, at a certain point, it did become not improvised and very labored over.

This is quite a joyous note to end the album on. After the regret, fear and longing that permeates the album, why end it on such a celebratory note?
Well, that really is the theme of the whole record. It’s why this song is called “Pride.” And it’s a big part of why the record is called Pride. For me, It’s how all this stuff comes together. All the dirt and broken parts and lust and spit and glory and hurt that is all over this album, it can all come out clean. Unabashed, unapologetic, unashamed. Proud.

*****
Single File [MP3]: Phosphorescent - "At Death, A Proclamation"