Phosphorescent returns today with an album announcement and a single — Matthew Houck's first new material in years.
Over five years after the release of 2018's C'est La Vie, Revelator is scheduled to land on April 5 via Verve Records. There was likewise a five-plus-year gap between Phosphorescent's last LP and the one before it, 2013's Muchacho, which featured the transcendent "Song for Zula."
With Houck at the production helm, Revelator was recorded at his Nashville home studio. It features guest appearances from the Raconteurs' Jack Lawrence, the Dirty Three's Jim White and Houck's partner, Jo Schornikow, who wrote album track "The World Is Ending," marking the first Phosphorescent song not penned by Houck.
Today, Houck shares the title track, a sweetly sweeping slice of lush Americana. Here's what he had to say about it:
This is the song that made me realize I was writing an album.
There’s always one that does that
Until then I’m sort of floundering around with a bunch of song bits in various stages
With no clear picture of what it is I’m doing
Once the song “Revelator” came to be
I could see what the album could be
I truly struggled with naming the album Revelator
As I feel like it probably has certain biblical and genre connotations
That don’t apply to this album or to Phosphorescent at all
But in the end I know what I mean by it
And the album really couldn’t be called anything else
And so that’s why this is the title track
I think it might be the best song I’ve ever written
Listen to "Revelator" below, where you can also check out the full tracklist.
Revelator:
1. Revelator
2. The World Is Ending
3. Fences
4. Impossible House
5. Wide as Heaven
6. A Moon Behind the Clouds
7. All the Same
8. A Poem on the Men’s Room Wall
9. To Get It Right
