![]() ![]() "I guess with the benefit of some distance that was a pretty messy time," he says now. Reading on mobile? Click here to see Phosphorescent playing liveīut by the time Here's to Taking It Easy was winding up its tour cycle, he was several steps into his 30s, and felt the need for some kind of reckoning. He had begun his musical career in the early noughties, an Alabama native relocated to Athens, Georgia, performing first as Fillup Shack, later as Phosphorescent, and touring widely. Houck's life before these songs were written was a somewhat ramshackle existence: recording, touring, drinking, taking drugs late nights, hard mornings. But what is certain is that it is a radiant collection of songs: a breakup record, certainly, but equally the sound of a man apparently waking from a stupor and coming to his senses. The success of Muchacho is difficult to pin to one reason: a shift in sound, possibly, from the easy country drift of earlier records to something more urgent, more compelling the propulsion, perhaps, of a startling first single, Song for Zula. Muchacho, then, was something of a revelation: where its predecessor, 2010's Here's to Taking It Easy, had sold a total of 15,000 copies, Muchacho notched up 20,000 in its first month alone. They had been quietly-feted records that had earned Houck a steady following and critical support, but sold only moderately. Phosphorescent had recorded five albums before the release of last spring's Muchacho. He orders a beer, a pickle-juice shot we head to a quiet corner of the bar. It is the day after Houck, who performs as Phosphorescent, has played the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of the Crossing Brooklyn Ferry festival, and he carries an air of post-show contentment about him. ![]() L ate Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn, the street full of long shadows and day drinkers, I watch Matthew Houck pull up outside the bar on his motorcycle, low sun catching its chrome trim and the top of his pale blonde hair. ![]()
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