Interview: Phosphorescent

“Does anyone have any requests?” asks Matthew Houck of a silent church. “Anything they’d like to hear?”

It’s one of those moments where you know you should have had one lined up because, although everyone here knows this Brooklyn man’s records inside-out, back-to-front, we’ve been listening so hard that none of us can remember a single track name, a single lyric, or a single anything that exists outside of these strong walls. As he moves to pluck a new note, trying not to look crestfallen, I pipe up in that pathetic excuse for a voice you get when you haven’t opened your mouth to speak in hours: “‘Not A Heel’?”

“Oh yeah. Yeah, I could do that,” he responds, gratefully, smiling a small amount.

Then, out they pour; those oaken, mildly protesting vocals – too wise, surely, for someone still young, but not so world-weary that they’ve given up hope. ‘Not A Heel’ is the first track of Aw Come Aw Wry, his third album and the one that brought him to my attention in a dark room with a candle burning. On record, it’s a subdued tapestry of lap steel and coppery atmosphere, stately thrums on an attic piano and the haunted shake of a tambourine. In Manchester’s Sacred Trinity Chapel, there’s only one man and a guitar; his vocals are a soft, animal bellow.

“I would try my best not to describe the records to anyone,” he gently insists, sitting opposite the lectern after the assembled have filed out. “I know people have to have something to latch on to when they’re discussing art, but most art I love – poems, novels, paintings, anything – you can’t really talk about. I hope Phosphorescent does that, too. You can sort of get around it, and put little touchstones there, but ideally it’s always something that you can’t…” He trails off. “Y’know, it talks about itself, fully. Hopefully! And there’s always something just behind the scenes.”

Houck, who’s from Brooklyn, is humble; his wintry eyes convey genuine gratitude when I say how affecting his latest album, Pride (this time on Dead Oceans, and a critical success), can be. But he’s assured of his own work, too, and rightly so. It’s refreshing to meet someone who not only feels but knows they’ve produced the best thing they could possibly have created at that time and under those circumstances. It’s not arrogance – it’s conviction.

“There are so many records out there that mean the world to me,” he continues. “But they sure weren’t thinking of me when they made them! I don’t know what I’m doing this for, either – I think music is supposed to be there, but I don’t know why. I think you find the answer in specifically turning away from the question. As soon as you try to think about why you’re doing what you’re doing, you lose what you’re doing. I can’t have anything to do with intentionally hoping to make someone feel a certain way. It’s just my job to do the best I can, to make the most beautiful thing it’s possible for me to make, and to stop there.”

Phosphorescence is a process in which energy absorbed by a substance is released relatively slowly in the form of light. It’s an apt allegory for the swelling feeling of illumination – and calm – that balloons as Houck’s Southern, organic gospel picks up the pace. His work seems ripe with a heady sense of locality and history, and an adherence to a duty to express that.

“Everything creeps in there, doesn’t it?” he says, nodding. “I’m not super well-versed in lyrical images and their meanings, but I do consciously try to write something that is lyrical and heavy and thick, on more than just one level. Most songwriter stuff that’s considered good I think is just garbage, y’know? So I’m basically just trying to do something a little better than that – something with weight behind it. As far as saying what it is that I’m trying to tell the story of, or whose history I’m singing about… I don’t know the answer to that. There’s no way to work yourself out, even, most of the time.”

When he sings, he tilts his head backwards slightly, enough for you to see the words pawing at his throat. He directs the sound towards the boned roof, as the stained glass behind him glows a rich red. The way he layers up his voice – both on record (see the sage, ghoulish chorus of ‘A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise’) and live, with a loop pedal – makes you feel you’re surrounded by some community of echoes. He invokes nature as both comforting and fearful (‘Wolves’), then there’s rejoicing… On ‘I Am A Full Grown Man’, listen for the sparkling sound of drinks glasses falling to the floor and the drunken, fruitful claps of old friends as they stumble on memories. There are bells and lights. You feel you’re there, at this party, with these people.

Of all art forms, is music the one that speaks most powerfully to you? “Absolutely. It’s the quickest, as well. I don’t know that I have that much patience, really. The idea of making a film, and all the work that that requires, seems really overwhelming to me. I don’t know how anyone can do that. But with music, it’s just direct.”

Which is why, at midnight, we stop talking and sit at the chapel’s organ, letting the place fill with chords as we add one note each till all octaves are covered, all pedals pressed.

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