Secret Meeting score: 90
by Stewart Cheetham and Phil Scarisbrick
C’est La Vie is Matthew Houck’s seventh studio album under the moniker Phosphorescent and the first album proper since 2013’s Muchacho. Despite early arrangements for the record being formed with his touring band, much of the workload – as with most of his back catalogue – is completed alone, with Houck taking up the reigns on production duties, as well as performing the bulk of the instrumentation.
On standout track, Around The Horn, vocals soar as piano and slide guitars careen gorgeously over a Krautrock synth groove. And although clocking in at over eight minutes, not a second here feels wasted or out of place – and is perhaps the best example of the organic nature in which early versions of these songs were developed collaboratively.
My Beautiful Boy – a song dedicated to his recently born son – expresses the feelings of vulnerability that fatherhood have stirred up in him, and the paternal desire to protect his child- “Hey, you got nothing to doubt or fear. Hey, not as long as I’m standing here”. And underpinned by a melody that even Paul Simon would proud of, it is lyrically much akin to The National’s Afraid of Everyone; whereas in the second half, the song shifts – bringing in themes of mortality: “They say that heaven ain’t so bad, but for heaven’s sake now ain’t it sad?”
The vocoder drenched lead vocals and Ricky Ray Jackson’s pedal steel guitar and screeching guitar solo, plus the imagery of dying dragons, combine to create the outlandishly brilliant Christmas Down Under. While the album’s title track -which was the last piece composed for the record – sees Houck performing the song alone in its entirety. What this album does best is to entrench you into its composer’s mind, and nowhere does that happen more than here. Lyrically, it may at face value appear as just another old fashioned tale of a forlorn lover, but throughout the record there is a huge underlying theme of change, transition and reflection following his recent marriage and move back South from New York- plus with such earnest delivery it is impossible not to be drawn in.
It wouldn’t be inappropriate to describe this record as career defining. After two decades making music under the Phosphorescent moniker, Houck has perfected a knack for writing catchy, yet emotionally-driven music. His seventh long player is not only a triumph, but also a serious contender for the title of 2018’s standout record.
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