BLACK ICE VINYL

Matthew Houck's music as Phosphorescent began taking shape in the mid-2000s, moving from freakier folk sounds early on to a more polished country-rock twang and increasingly refined production as his style matured. His eighth album Revelator might be Phosphorescent's most finely crafted effort to date -- it fine-tunes Houck's combination of rusty, wistful songwriting and rich instrumentation. It's the product of years of exploration and work toward exactly such an album, with Houck's career going from lots of touring and constant activity to a quieter, slower life. Revelator comes six years after its 2018 predecessor, C'est La Vie, and like that album, it was carefully put together in Houck's home studio. Contributions from bassist Jack Lawrence, drummer Jim White, and vocalist Jo Schornikow mesh with mellow strings, steel guitar touches, and on tracks like the dreamy "Wide as Heaven," some of the atmospheric sounds that defined the project's earliest days can be heard. Houck's gift for catchy, lyrical melodies is still intact throughout the album, in particular on the title track that begins the record, and on the mid-period Dylan-esque closer "To Get It Right." These songs take their time establishing simple but slowly built structures, sinking their hooks in as they ramp up. "Impossible House" has echoes of the rolling, wistful grandeur of "Song for Zula," a standout from Phosphorescent's 2013 album Muchacho, and one of the project's best known tracks. There's also a little bit of the laid-back Jimmy Buffet influence that showed up on certain C'est La Vie songs, in particular on the island-evoking bounce of "A Moon Behind the Clouds." While Houck doesn't break much new ground on Revelator, he turns in another solid installment of the Phosphorescent story, one that's a few degrees warmer, a few shades gentler, and a little bit more comfortable than the last.

A1 Revelator
A2 The World Is Ending
A3 Fences
A4 Impossible House
A5 Wide As Heaven
B6 Moon Behind The Clouds
B7 All The Same
B8 A Poem On The Men’s Room Wall
B9 To Get It Right