Last week, Phosphorescent returned to our stoop for a second recording session. It’s not here yet, but there’s time for that one, another shimmering demonstration of breaking points, irrational/rational fears and some of the best woesomeness in the business. The cocaine lights that Matthew Houck sings about in this debut session are what he bathes everything in. He even towels the sentiments that he spills with terrycloth versions of that fluorescence. He played a quaint show while he was here, in the pizza parlor that’s been making a little indie rock name for itself. Fighting through a sickly, dying amplifier at the outset, Houck and the rest of his Phosphorescent gang shouldered all of what couldn’t be deemed just sadness – for the strength was still there in the veins and worried lines. “Wolves,” just one of the great songs on the band’s latest great album, Pride, is a stroll through Stephen King’s pet cemetery or a Cujo moment, though it’s given all of the pacing and temperament of something Mr. Will Oldham or Richard Buckner would do. Those wolves are staring at the main character with blood in their mouths and they’re closing in. Earlier in the evening, they were calling up their favorite YouTube moments: a wonky Van Halen performance from a week earlier where Eddie Van Halen’s guitar sounds like a garbage heap, newscasters slipping on air and calling someone gay and not blind like they were supposed to and a lion recognizing and reuniting with its former care givers after 10 years in the wild. YouTube is a great muse to have.

Free Songs: Phosporescent

Phosporescent Feature