The rebirth of Phosphorescent

There was a period of five years between Muchacho, the record that made Matthew Houck aka Phosphorescent better-known amongst the general public, and his new album C’est la Vie. Over that half decade, Houck spent two years touring the world with his fragile mélange of Americana and babbling synths, got married, had two children, moved from New York to Nashville, built a studio, and...nearly died of meningitis. Indeed, there was enough “life” happening not to worry about music for a while. “I had planned a break anyway,” the 38-year-old singer-songwriter laughs over a glass of Grolsch in Amsterdam. Outside a rare summer storm blows up. “My wife Jo [Schornikow, the Australian multi-instrumentalist of Phosphorescent whom Houck met while making Muchacho - TZ] gave birth to our daughter when we still had a year and a half of touring to go. When we got back home, we found that New York had become very different.

We decided that it was not the kind of place where we wanted to raise our kids. I had also bought a huge recording console from the 1970s that was too big for our apartment in Brooklyn. So we started looking for a new home. That took us a while.” Houck eventually found an old warehouse complex in Nashville, and by building some new walls, fitting new ceilings, and installing electricity, he transformed it into the Spirit Sounds Studio. It became the place where his seventh album was born. “My instruments literally spent eight months under a tarp. It was intensely liberating to be able to play music again.”

A TIGHT FAMILY

When Houck wrote the songs for Muchacho back in 2012, he was completely down and out. Life on the road had exhausted him, he had lost his girlfriend, his apartment, and his desire to make music. While in seclusion in Mexico, he found the “muchacho” that he wanted to be: somebody who pulled himself up by the bootstraps. That’s how he climbed out of the hole he was in.
Today Houck does look like a completely different person, someone who sings: “I don’t write all night burning holes up to heaven no more.” On the new song “New Birth in New England”, his fragile voice, helped by a Caribbean beat and a gospel choir, sounds almost more joyous than Paul Simon. “That’s true. [Laughs] But at the same time, that song is the odd man out on the album,” he says. “People think that I have made an incredibly happy album. But,” and he points to the thunder and lightning outside, “it isn’t all sunshine.” Houck says that the arrivals of his daughter and son, who are now four and two, made him stronger. “But fatherhood has also made me more anxious. I am becoming increasingly conscious of the kind of world that my kids will grow up in.

C’est la Vie is a fairly troubled record, it focuses a lot on the overarching sadness of this life. From the peaks, the valleys look even deeper.” The more he was confronted with life, the greater the contrast became with its inevitable end. “I realize that one day, my children will die, that I will die, and that my wife will die.” For Houck, joy thus still walks hand in hand with melancholy. “Hey you got nothing to doubt or fear / Hey not as long as I’m standing here,” he softly sings to his son in “My Beautiful Boy”. But at the same time he realizes that “this world ain’t never fair” and “that there’s trouble everywhere.” Houck confirms that the song is a shout out to John Lennon, who, after a five year sabbatical in the 1970s wrote “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” for his son Sean, a song that produced the iconic lyrics “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” There are also other Beatles that echo through C’est la Vie. It is no coincidence that the title rhymes with “Let It Be”, and the song “C’est la Vie No.2” even ends with the very famous closing chords of that classic. “Caught me again,” Houck laughs. “That song is one of the most straightforward things I’ve ever written. The chord scheme and the melody immediately sound familiar. I thought that was appropriate for my record, which I think has a more classic feel than my other albums. In fact, ‘C’est la Vie No.2’ was the last song that I wrote for the album. With that one, all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. The songs all had strong personalities, but this one connected them like a family.”

DRUNK FOR A DECADE

“These rocks, they are heavy / Been carrying ’em around all my days,” we hear like a mantra of the suffering artist in “These Rocks”. “Yes, I am still doing that, even though I am a happier person now,” Houck nods. But there is another line from that song that lingers: “I stayed drunk for a decade / Been thinkin’ of puttin’ that stuff away.” “Um… It seems like that line is pretty noticeable, everyone keeps on asking me about it. [Laughs] I drank a lot over the past ten years. I think it was due to social anxiety. I couldn’t manage to be a musician without drinking. And without wanting to encourage anybody to drink excessively, it actually made me feel more capable. It helped me to make music more freely.” “If drinking don’t kill me, her memory will / I can’t hold out much longer, the way that I feel,” Houck sang on his previous tour, words that he borrowed from the late country icon George Jones. “It’s a great song and I felt a deep connection to it for a long time. But I don’t sing it anymore.” He grins, takes a swig of his beer, and watches the rain pour down outside.

> Phosphorescent. 23/10, 19.30, Botanique