Phosphorescent - Pride [2007][EAC,log,cue. FLAC]

Artist: Phosphorescent
Release: Pride
Discogs: 1335443
Released: 2007
Label: Dead Oceans
Catalog#: DOC005 / DOC005CD
Format: FLAC / Lossless / Log (100%) / Cue / CD
Country: US
Style: Rock, Alternative Rock, Acoustic, Indie Rock

Tracklisting:

01. A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise
02. Be Dark Night
03. Wolves
04. At Death, A Proclamation
05. The Waves At Night
06. My Dove, My Lamb
07. Cocaine Lights
08. Pride

Matthew Houck’s adoring fans occasionally find themselves conscripted into straw-sheriff roles, bound to struggle against the mob justice of Inspector Bloggit followers who'd charge him with petty theft just because he seems aesthetically connectable to other dignitaries within his cosmic art-folk / mystic alt-country / slowcore-gospel idiom. The Neutral Milk Hotel comparisons that his work used to attract were inexplicable to this typist's ears-- wtf, because he also lived in Athens? And yes, now that he claims Brooklyn, one can detect-- in three songs-- a flirtation with those post-Animal Collective poles of, y'know, elliptical ethereality and raucous tribalism in his approach to song structure and performance.
Sure, a few acts do consciously cannibalize others' textures, but we hype-machinists too frequently commit the fallacy of assuming that soundalikeness equals influence or translates as aping. Try this at home: Play a guitar and sing, and odds are, now that so many of our psyches are plumb awash in multiplicities of bands, you're going to innocently/organically "sound like" somebody else, unless you're, I don't know, David Thomas Broughton. If in the past Phosphorescent's work contained moments that could be received as echoing Sparklehorse, Tindersticks, Clem Snide, Low, downbeat Flaming Lips, the Pacific-pastoral K Records stable, and the Joe-Henry-curated Jesus' Son soundtrack's commingling of soul, spirituals, oldies, and faux-ldies, well, good for humanity.
But the Will Oldham thing: yeah. And Pride continues that tradition on all fronts. First, the cover photo is difficult not to perceive as an homage to Oldham's Days in the Wake, itself a Jandek homage. And the lion theme, even if it's based on Houck's hair-encircled face: consult Oldham's "The Lion Lair" (since citing the Sage Francis team-up "Sea Lion" would be rash). The yelping, howling, abstract title track: consult Oldham's "Come a Little Dog"-- from Days in the Wake, no less. Speaking of canines, this album's "Wolves": consult Oldham's "Wolf Among Wolves" and Superwolf. Houck's voice warbles exactly like mid-career Oldham, one of his old songs even used a Days in the Wake song title ("All Is Grace") as a lyric, both performers abuse further animal metaphors, both frame songs as prayers, both feature lackadaisical-verging-on-catatonic overdubs, and both include female singing as flesh-out fodder. Most damningly, Pride was preceded (and upstaged) by a kickass Daytrotter session featuring arrangements and production that strike me as aiming for the throat of Oldham's greatest 4-song EP, the Kramer-helmed The Mountain-- the two closing songs of which Houck already mimicked in terms of lyrics and inflection on his last full-length's "South (of America)."
The above paragraph: FOOLED YOU! Could have kept going, too, through more Phosphorescent-discography lyrical and vocal similarities with Lost Blues and Western Songs, even milking the strangely touching syllabic nonsense of Houck's Aw Come Aw Wry and Oldham's All Most Heaven, but this "review" would have then topped 2,000 words. I also could have faked an equally dubious/convincing chunk about Iron and Wine, down to the hirsuteness, biblical dabblage, EP supremacy, and the titles of Beam compositions such as "Lion's Mane" or the new album's, um, "Wolves." My point: I don't put much stock in Jungian collectivity, but nobody gets to monopolize this archetypal shit. Oldham and Beam were both called copycats of their ancestors when they dawned, and 'tis time to afford Houck the respect that their work has since earned. OMFG all three of 'em use the same chord progressions AND mention the (planet-dominating) ocean a lot! OMFG, I think I hear traces of Pride's awesome guestlist in Phosphorescent's music, too! That'd include Nat Baldwin, Annie Palmer, Jana Hunter, Liz Durrett, Dirty Projectors, and Castanets in the conspiracy!
So: stunning, stand-alone album. Except that the reportedly high-school-marching-band-inspired version of "A Death, A Proclamation" here-- while more interesting than anything recently by, say, Will Oldham-- doesn't hit the heights of the wailed, piano-solo-assisted Daytrotter arrangement. Same goes for "Cocaine Lights", despite its being a fine comedown un-anthem on par with classics by Kris Kristofferson or Neil Young, every chronicled gesture precise (the "blood clicking" and face-covering) and every phrase beautiful (the partner-in-a-slip and the "showy amen"). Pride romanticizes the burden of touring ("Even in these dirty clubs counting 1-2-3"), but: Live in concert, Houck just dwindles and stumbles. Over multiple shows, I've only seen him confident once, when right in front of the stage, I redneckfully started a shoving match with a former bosom chum turned consummately annoying townie who insisted on yammering loudly to someone gullible enough to suffer him and who made fun of my investment in the show after asking him to be quiet or move back five fucking times. Houck put his hand on my head like a guru, and to an even less worthy arrangement of a requested "Cocaine Lights", smirked and repeatedly crooned, "Where is the love?"
The love is in Pride's lyrics, which escape the shackles of their occasional poetic flourishes to be unmysterious and self-explanatory, totally broken and totally vulnerable, and therefore unique. The speakers' partners are pretty much anchors, and the crack in Houck's voice: a mournful yodel. These voices would have us believe that they mean to repair the relationships they're in: "Tell me where you've been and I will tell you where I've been/ It will all be okay." But seductive statements of faith in resurrection are eventually outweighed by aftermath-odes; these speakers prefer loss. The listener gets the sense that they don't even miss a singular individual but a composite of squandered loves, Frankenmates formed in minds that crave impossible partners, even while retroactively full of promise: "O love, the one day I tarried too far and I never came home/ O love, I always carried your heart married deep in my own." And even the internet doesn't have room for me to gush over the Beach-Boy-haunted, vocal-drone stuff.

dickthespic.org