​After having their van and the $40,000 worth of equipment it contained stolen in Greenpoint last Thursday night, and subsequently writing a Double Rainbow-inspired series of verses by way of thanking those who moved to help them in their time of need, Phosphorescent report today that the cops bailed them out. In poetry form, of course:

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​Yes, fuzz-country sweethearts Phosphorescent lost $40,000 in gear when their van was stolen in Greenpoint last week, but in the end this tragedy has paradoxically only strengthened their faith in humanity re: the public outpouring of support that followed, leading ringleader Matthew Houck to pen a poem-like thank-you note that quotes, of course, the Double Rainbow guy:

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​Ask Ted Leo sometime about the brutal, unforgivingly marginal economics that confront indie musicians who work without the benefit of a major-label backer or any kind of meaningful record sales. Having $40,000 worth of equipment stolen, as Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck did last night after a show at Pier 54, can be a disaster almost impossible for a working artist to overcome. Which is why Houck's tale is so depressing. Dead Oceans has the report:

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Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​Brooklyn troubadour Matthew Houck, the ever-bearded frontman of Phosphorescent, has added another stellar album to his formidable roster, the slow-sailing, appropriately titled fifth full length Here's To Taking It Easy (Dead Oceans, due May 11). Unlike indie crooners like Iron & Wine or Cat Power, Houck treats songs like starting points instead of end points: glorious excuses to create walls of reverb, interlocking whines of steel guitar, eight-minute psych meditations, and even the occasional quasi-beatboxed Middle Eastern Neil Young jammer. "The Mermaid Parade" is a quintessential New York take on a quintessentially New York event--a country-folk ballad that takes place at the annual flippers-'n'-floppers trek down Coney Island's Surf Ave., a colorful parade best known for its brash costumes and brazen displays of flesh. (This year's King Neptune and Queen Mermaid? Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson!) But Houck, originally from Athens, still keeps the wide-eyed wonderment of a tourist, juxtaposing his sunny awe of seeing some naked ladies dancing next to the shore with the bummer-strummer longing of a long-distance relationship.

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Cover artist: Mark Mothersbaugh

Showpaper is a biweekly newsprint list of local all-ages shows, a one-sheet that harkens back to the days of punk flyers and Xeroxed fanzines. But the most unfailingly superb part of Showpaper is a regular sidebar called "I Saw You," a kind of Missed Connections for tallboy drinkers and Brooklyn bike-lock carriers. These blurbs are usually hilarious and horn-doggy, flirty and fickle. So every once in a while, we republish some of the best. Usually, there's five, but this time, we've just got two from the brand-new issue--extra-special ones from Todd P's Fort Tilden acoustic BBQ. Guess who makes a special guest appearance?

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Thankfully, we no longer have to keep this secret: Phosphorescent are playing a free show tonight in Williamsburg. If you didn't get enough of the band at Celebrate Brooklyn this past Saturday, catch angelic country crooner Matthew Houck and his gang of folksters in a more intimate setting at Bruar Falls, the new Grand Street, Brooklyn space run by the same people who run the Cake Shop. The show starts at 9pm; more info here.

Janelle Monáe (Stubbs)
Phosphorescent (Club De Ville)
SXSW Wednesday Night, March 18

I would declare that a bunch of Decemberists fans crowding the front of the stage four hours before the sea shanties etc. even begin just to insure their spot is not exactly Atlanta r&b space-cadet Janelle Monáe's target audience, but this would suggest I have any idea who her audience is, which I don't, though I hope someone out there (preferably at her label) does, because she deserves to find it. She is deeply strange and supremely confident in her strangeness, rattling off dystopian sci-fi torch songs with both Bond-theme and Tron overtones, her backing band very Purple Rain in its commitment to almost cock-rock heights of excess, lots of guitar shredding and whatnot, as if every part of every song is the last 45 seconds of "Let's Go Crazy." The daffy concept-album conceit driving Metropolis: The Chase Suite is plenty off-putting, sure -- the cover sums it up well enough -- but onstage, with shredding guitar and copious strobe-light action and her own lithe ballet moves at her disposal, she seems destined for a stage and a spotlight so huge and futuristic they don't exist yet.

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Phosphorescent play tonight at the Kimmel Center, NYU with the National. And then tomorrow, Friday, February 29 at the Mercury Lounge with the Bowerbirds.

Phosphorescent at the Cake Shop last November. Photo by Cami D

Phosphorescent
Union Hall
February 27, 2008

When reading this profile of Phosphorescent’s principle songwriter Matthew Houck, one gets the sense he’s not all there. Maybe it’s an act. Maybe it’s not. Maybe Houck is a brilliant schuckster, one who knows how to play on our deepest attachments to sentimentality and how to make certain sounds when paired with certain words sound brilliant. Or maybe it’s not an act; he’s really a flighty guy livin’ in a flighty little world, where stringing consecutive sentences and thoughts together are as much of a chore as, say, cleaning the bathtub.

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Possibly 4th Street is a regular SOTC feature in which Rob Trucks invites musicians to play songs somewhere, anywhere, in the five-borough public. Previously, Steve Wynn performed in a dog run and The Black Lips played a couple songs in Sara Roosevelt Park. Today, we've got the gorgeously plaintive Phosphorescent in Grand Ferry Park.

photo by Camille Dodero

Possibly 4th Street: Phosphorescent

by Rob Trucks
Crack audio and video recording
by Camille Dodero.

Volume I, Issue Five

Who: Phosphorescent, the recording name of Bed-Stuy resident Matthew Houck

Who Phosphorescent is today, October 4th: Matthew Houck, Ben McConnell, Jeff Bailey, Scott Stapleton, and Elizabeth Barfield

When: About six o’clock on Thursday evening

Where: Grand Ferry Park along the East River shore, in Williamsburg

Songs Played: "Wolves" (scroll for MP3), "Be Dark Night"

A book Matthew Houck has read at least twice:
“Resuscitation of a Hanged Man (by Denis Johnson)”

A movie he’s seen at least three times:
Mulholland Drive.

The album he’s listened to more than any other in his life:
Another Side of Bob Dylan.

The circumstances under which he wrote “Wolves,” the highlight of Phosphorescent's recently released Pride:
“It was specific about . . . . I was living with a girl and, and it was, something about, something about . . . . We had talked about some stuff and kind of . . . . I don’t know. It’s hard to know exactly what really, but it’s something about . . . .”

Was this morning? Afternoon? At night?
“Morning, morning. Morning with that one.”

Okay, so you’d been talking about some stuff . . .
“Well, maybe not talking about some stuff. Maybe going through some stuff, and it was all just kind of how there was always . . . . I mean, you know, it’s pretty just metaphorical, pretty directly metaphorical on purpose to where it’s not too specific where you can kind of apply whatever you want to it, I hope.”

Is she in the room when you write it?
“No.”

You have to leave the room that she’s in in order to write it.
“I do.”

But she's awake.
“She’s awake.”

More about "Wolves":
It's the first song Houck wrote upon arriving in New York and the only song (so far) that he's written on ukulele. The orchestration is sparse (a bass drum here, an acoustic guitar there), though still a sturdy bedrock for layer upon layer of voices (yea verily it's a 21st-century Gregorian chant by way of Brooklyn), thin like a cabin window without insulation, vulnerable, and hauntingly transparent. What remains is something tenuous, transforming and, in just the right light (say, sundown on the East River), resoundingly timeless.

DOWNLOAD
Phosphorescent, "Wolves (Live on the East River Shore)" (MP3)

Phosphorescent plays Silent Barn this Friday November 9 (myspace.com/silentbarn) and the Cake Shop November 10 (cake-shop.com)

photo by Camille Dodero

Matthew Houck
photo by Rob Trucks

For video of Phosphorescent performing "Wolves" on the East River shore, click below on that "read on" link. For further discourse on this October afternoon, consult the piece that also ran in print over here.

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