FADER TV: Open Bar with Phosphorescent
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On one of the shittiest winter days New York has seen in awhile, we invited Matthew Houck aka Phosphorescent to come by Heathers for the latest installment of our Open Bar series. Houck, along with Angel Deradoorian of the Dirty Projectors, ran through a couple bleary-eyed and comfortably worn songs from his Willie Nelson covers album To Willie (out right now on Dead Oceans). Up above is their performance of “It’s Not Supposed To Be That Way” and about half of the album is streaming on the Phosphorescent MySpace page.
Freeload: Phosphorescent, “Reasons to Quit”
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Make no mistake, For Willie, Phosphorescent’s all Willie Nelson covers album (out 2/3 on Dead Oceans) is less a disparate collection of songs, and more a series of eleven mega bummers in a row. The band drew from all over Nelson’s career and then brought the songs together by making them way sadder than the originals. Are we willing to temporarily trade our happiness for album consistency? Sure, why not! We’re not opposed to occasional bouts of music induced introspection. Download “Reasons to Quit” below, get melancholy for a few minutes and then listen to something happy to take the edge off.
Download: Phosphorescent, “Reasons to Quit”
Video: Phosphorescent On They Shoot Music Don’t They
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It seems like we roll through the office every morning and find new videos of Matthew Houck (also known as Phosphorescent) playing a guitar in some weird location in Europe, like the back of a car or an empty apartment with old wallpaper. Normally when we see this stuff we’re like, Wow never being home would probably wear a dude down, but considering the fact that Houck always sounds worn down it’s hard to tell if he actually is. Maybe that’s why he covered Nick Cave’s “Right Now I’m A-Roaming,” which is about the stuff he’s going to do when he finally gets back home. One time, on a particularly long vacation we thought about how when we got home we were going to build a Lego Technics Helicopter, so we get the sentiment. Here’s a couple videos from They Shoot Music Don’t They of Houck playing “Right Now I’m A-Roaming,” which is good, and also “Dead Heart,” which is better.
Video: Phosphorescent Black Cab Sessions
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In this video, Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent plays ‘Wolves” in the back of a black cab while wearing a weird hat. Most of the time you can’t see the details of his face because it’s so bright outside. There are a lot of things we liked about Phosphorescent’s Pride, and one of them was dude’s ability to make the most melancholy songs ever. At this point we’ve seen and heard a bunch of different permutations of the track, but it is most awesome in videos like this where the extreme intimacy of the song is paired with a bunch of oblivious people walking around outside. Also dude inspired us all to grow beards last winter (even the ladies!)
Video: Phosphorescent, “A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise”
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What’s the deal with horses these days? First Santogold and now this. Look out for the FADER horse issue coming soon! For real though, the Phosphorescent album was one of our winter sleepers, and we are still finding ourselves putting it on even as the world gets liveable again. “A Picture of our Torn Up Praise,” is wintery and lilting and it sounds like dudes wearing suspenders. So luckily, among other things in this video that we won’t mention because it will spoil the story, we get Matthew Houck in suspenders.
Live: Phosphorescent
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On Friday night, after tearing down the house at EVR (we played “No Diggety!”) We headed out to the Silent Barn to see recent Dead Oceans signee Phosphorescent play what we expected to be slow and melancholy songs—instead we got jammed out southern rock with a full band including a dude wailing on the keyboard. Essentially it sounded nothing like the new album, but we weren’t mad. Matthew Houck and crew ran through an awesome rendition of “Wolves,” and an extended version of “At Death, a Proclamation” that converted the brief funeral march of the original into a lush, gummy wall of sound. The songs sounded different, sure, but isn’t that the whole point of going to a concert? Also, everyone seemed really drunk.
