ARTiST: Phosphorescent
ALBUM: Here's To Taking It Easy
BiTRATE: 180kbps avg
QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz
LABEL: Dead Oceans
GENRE: Indie
SiZE: 60.83 megs
PLAYTiME: 0h 44min 20sec total
RiP DATE: 2010-05-22
STORE DATE: 2010-05-14
Track List:
--------
01. It's Hard To Be Humble (When 4:28
You're From Alabama)
02. Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me 4:49
Foolishly)
03. We'll Be Here Soon 3:17
04. The Mermaid Parade 4:22
05. I Don't Care If There's A 4:55
Cursing
06. Tell Me Baby (Have You Had 4:37
Enough)
07. Hej, Me I'm Light 4:38
08. Heaven, Sittin' Down 4:26
09. Los Angeles 8:48
Release Notes:
--------
In 2009, Phosphorescent released To Willie, an album dedicated to covering songs
written or popularized by Willie Nelson. At the time it seemed like a stylistic
sidetrack-- not only did Phosphorescent mastermind Matthew Houck dig more deeply
into traditional country music than ever before, a few of his interpretations
also evinced far more playfulness and fun than any of his original offerings.
Surely, the next proper Phosphorescent effort would find Houck returning to the
forlorn wilderness folk he'd howled out on his first three albums though, right?
Not so fast: To Willie turned out to be more harbinger than lark.
Phosphorescent's latest record, Here's to Taking It Easy-- with a full recording
band in tow-- is by far the most conventional music he's ever made. Luckily,
Houck and his cohorts compensate for a dip in idiosyncrasy by inhabiting the
tropes of beer-soaked, sun-baked country-rock with fullness, commitment, and
chops, all while finding enough room for Phosphorescent's trademark ragged
lonesomeness.
The opening "It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're From Alabama)" announces its
shit-kicking intentions with hot guitar licks and blaring horn charts; it may be
the first Phosphorescent song more impressive for what the music's doing than
for what Houck's singing or how he's singing it, but it ain't the last. "I Don't
Care If There's Cursing" is lyrically monotonous but boasts a vibrant bassline
and sterling pedal steel while "We'll Be Here Soon" expertly recreates the feel
of a late-night Mexican cantina (proving Houck's internalized Nelson exceedingly
well). Then there's the closing "Los Angeles", which offers up a faithful
facsimile (maybe a little too faithful) of Neil Young's bruised guitar heroics.
Speaking of L.A., it plays a substantial role in the album's lyrics, which
chiefly concern the strain placed on relationships by life on the road. Perhaps
the touring-man blues of "Tell Me Baby (Have You Had Enough)" feel a bit
shopworn, but Houck proves himself capable of redeeming the tropes with a line
like, "I wish those nights of pleasure and days of pain weren't so tightly
bound," (from "Heaven, Sittin' Down"). And that's nothing next to the
staggering, heart-crushing "The Mermaid Parade", the record's runaway best song,
which finds Houck's narrator wandering around Coney Island to shake his mind off
of a broken marriage, finally sputtering out with gut-piercing specificty,
"Goddamn it, Amanda, goddamn it all."
All that said, there's no need to fret that quavering nature boy Houck's been
lost entirely beneath all the musical carousing and Angeleno smog, not when the
album also contains the spectral, gospel-haunted "Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me
Foolishly)" and the evanescent, elliptical "Hej, Me I'm Light". Here's to Taking
It Easy is a great record, but I feel like Houck's best is still in him-- the
one where the deep roots of tradition will finally be inextricably fused with
his own weird, shambling soul.