If you’re wondering if you should see Phosphorescent live and if they put on a good show, I’ll spare you the trouble. You should and they do.
That’s the easy part of the review. Describing exactly who or what they are, not so much.
For the past two weeks the country has been grasping at labels. Pete Seeger was a vagrant, a communist, a woodcutter, a folk hero to some an enemy of the state to others; Philip Seymour Hoffman a shape-shifter, not just on the screen, but apparently off it as well. Their personas were too expansive, too subjective to be captured in a one-page obituary. They are greater than any one label can suggest. So too, is Phosphorescent.
Reviewers will often try to pigeonhole Phosphorescent’s sound. One described it as “A muddy haze of wonky-tonk ballads, disco-infected alt country jams, and anthemic post-everything rock explosions.” Nice prose, but try hearing that in your mind’s ear. No review is complete without a few key words— “ethereal” / “ambient” and “country-rock”— which I think are appropriate, but not clarifying. I am not sure I’ve come across a convincing description of Phosphorescent.
So, regrettably, I took to a disdainful reading of my predecessors’ attempts. I told myself I could do it better, that Matthew Houck would read my review and say “Yep, Sam. You hit the nail on the head, that’s exactly how I’d describe myself. Nice job, son.” But after the digital equivalent of brimming my wastebasket with crumbled-up balls of paper, my description seems every bit as vague. Now, a little wiser, I urge you to avoid the same sort of contempt.
Tuesday night at the Sinclair, some 35 minutes after Caveman stepped off, the house lights cut to black and “Sun, Arise!” played on the speakers in its entirety before Houck—dressed in tight pants, a large cowboy hat and golden boots—and his bandmates took the stage. They went straight into “Quotidian Beasts” and “Terror in the Canyon (Wounded Heart)” from the newest record, Muchacho, which Houck famously wrote in Mexico while seeking refuge from a breakup. Despite all the components of an album fraught with despair and anxiety and regret, this record is more rooted in resilience. It is about self-recognition and acceptance, most notably in “Muchacho’s Tune” where Houck sings, “Hey, I’ve been fucked up. And I’ve been a fool . . . I’ll fix myself up. To come and be with you.”
The stage, set with white wildflowers, candles, and burning incense took us away from busy, sold-out Harvard Square venue and into Houck’s living room. It felt intimate, like Houck invited everyone individually. He’d respond to every shout from the floor, high-five every hand that shot up in the first few rows. The prospect of work the next morning (prospective because of the oncoming storm), did not slow the crowd from boozing, dancing and singing along. The latter was a daunting task, even the non tone-deaf struggled to match Houck’s raspy drawl and unfurled lyrics. The merciful Houck applauded us though, at least pretending to be impressed at times.
Throughout the set we heard tracks from five of their six albums, all the way back to the 2005 release Aw Come Aw Wry. It soon became clear as to why they cannot be neatly confined to any one description. We see his outlaw country persona in his (cowboy hat) cover of “Can I sleep in your Arms?” from To Willie; something folkier in” Nothing was Stolen” from Here’s To Taking it Easy; and alternative, more ambient side in his latest “Song of Zula.” They played a rocking rendition of “Ride On/Right On” and a poignant “Wolves” where Houck, solo on stage at this point (true for the last three songs up until the encore) continuously looped the last lyric. By wavering his intonation each time around, a choir of twenty Houcks howled, “Wait ‘til the wolves make nice. Wait ‘til the wolves make nice.”
Sure, plenty of bands have range, but very few can take us through resilience and sorrow and drunken rowdiness as thoroughly as Phosphorescent. They don’t have one sound we can attribute them because they don’t stand for just one thing, nor did Seeger and Hoffman. What I learned from the show, and from the two late greats, is that there is a point to the absurdity and vagueness that comes when we speak of their careers. Because in reality, we are not speaking of their careers, but of the value of their contributions. These are giant and timeless, something greater than the individual that will exist well beyond their deaths.
And maybe that’s why the conflicting “ambient” and “country-rock” are in some way appropriate together. Phosphorescent sounds caught between time—stuck somewhere between the distant future and the distant past, which just happens to be now. It is not a perfect description, but we shouldn’t expect to find one. For as soon we do, Phosphorescent will have moved on, stretching further into their expansiveness.
