Phosphorescent - Here's To Taking It Easy

Brooklyn-based and Alabama-born, Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck has carved a nice niche for his band as a Southern-fried, folk-tinged, rollicking rock effort. What is so unique about this niche is its very transcendence of genre boundaries.

Here’s To Taking It Easy, the band’s fourth LP, is perhaps the best encapsulation of this genre resistance. The album forgoes the spiritual qualities of 2007’s stunning Pride and the hagiographic, more traditionally Southern tendencies of 2009’s Willie Nelson tribute To Willie. Instead, this album is an articulation of its title—a fusion of David Hockney’s Los Angeles portraits (albeit less queer) with an Allman Brothers sensibility. In this sense, it differs from To Willie, which was upbeat in its own right. Houck and company just feel more at home in these songs than the Nelson covers.

But Houck is careful to balance this out. The album possesses a darkness and suggests some demons. Houck’s lyricism is rife with a sense of loss, be it of a lover or in the abandonment of utopian impossibilities. This is where the Phosphorescent we know so well emerges. Contrasted to the more joyous arrangement, Houck reveals his unique gift with genre fusion, combining blues, gospel and soul.

The album is imperfect to be sure, but it lends itself to greater pleasure with each listening. At its best, Here’s to Taking It Easy is an articulation of the potentials of a Southern sound informed by another part of America. With Will Oldham at his side, Houck is paving a new sonic landscape for the South, and it is a bright future.