Dead Oceans

Up until last year’s Willie Nelson covers record, To Willie, Phosphorescent – essentially the recording alias of Athens, Georgia native Matt Houck – was more commonly associated with lonesome, gothic folk not too dissimilar to Bon Iver or I See A Darkness-era Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy; last year’s effort saw Houck move towards a more countrified sound, and here he builds on that to create an album that’s incredibly moving, heartbroken and joyous all at once. Here’s To Taking It Easy is what Gram Parsons once referred to as Cosmic American Music, and it’s how country music should sound when stripped of its Nashville pop sheen.

Opening with ‘It’s Hard to Be Humble (When You’re From Alabama)’ it sounds as if Phosphorescent has learnt a thing or two from Lambchop records like Nixon, the horn section driving the song forward astride luminous pedal steel guitar licks, while Houck sings like his life depends on this song reaching some sort of desperate conclusion. It gives way to ‘Nothing Was Stolen (Love You Foolishly)’, a beautifully slow-paced love song with harmonies that CSN would be proud of. Close your eyes and you can almost see the hungover sun setting behind a run-down bar whose neon lights have long since failed. At this point it’s hard to resist skipping back to the start to take in these opening two tracks again, such is the mastery of the playing, the confidence of the songwriting and the atmosphere they create.

The best, however, is yet to come: ‘The Mermaid Parade’ is a standout here, not just from this record, but from anything yet released this year. Houck sings about a failed marriage, but without a trace of sentimentality or self-pity; “And I know all about your new man / Your new, older, old man / And I heard that he’s married / Ah, you be careful, Amanda / And yeah, I found a new friend too / And yeah, she’s pretty and small / But goddamn it, Amanda / Oh, goddamn it all.” It’s gut-wrenching stuff on record, but as with all great country music, the pain evoked by the singer allows the listener to feel that bit more alive. This isn’t depressing music – it’s melancholy at it’s finest.

The rest of the album takes us back to the horns, back to the wonderful harmonies and back to the bar for one last beer. Each track seems to tell its own tale of doomed love, but with light at the end of the tunnel. It’s clear that Houck has poured his heart and soul into making this record, and if I hear anything better this year then I may have to eat my Stetson.

Set your eyes upon any British mid-to-high-brow music publication nowadays and you’ll find a record reviewed under the branding of ‘Freak-Folk’. This term haunts British music journalists grappling with the ingenuity of New Weird America imports such as Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective. In actual fact, the term ‘Freak-Folk’ is as redundant (however much recycled) as the newly-fashionable Shoegaze re-branding of any old British band putting out a sophomore record with mild attention to guitar effects.

For artists like Akron/Family or Six Organs of Admittance – very different really, but both American and folk-influenced to some degree – it’s less about genre and more a fascination with the relationship between modern America and the vast wilderness it once was. On Akron/Family’s latest record, Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free, the relationship between man and the earth he sprang from is very much advanced – there’s guilt there. ‘Everyone is Guilty’ is a giddy and choppy slice of single material in which the band manage to sum-up the general disorientation that clouds the issue of humans destroying their natural surroundings. And the strings that close the track are just as ambiguous, either signalling a joyous discovery of truth (we are guilty, and we have a chance to change things) or else a tired, saddened release of breath (no one cares, and thus are we doomed). ‘River’ could be an ode to a lost love or a faith flinching: “You are no longer a river to me/…Though your coursing remains.” It’s a beautiful track, too.

One thing clear about Set ‘em Wild is the band’s desire to rock-out. Though, arguably, the blistering switch midway through ‘Gravelly Mountains of the Moon’ disrupts the latter progress of the album. But then again, this is what Akron/Family want to do, they want to experiment further with styles and structure, and they succeed in doing so. But that ‘coursing’ remains, and maybe the band’s experimentation this time (discounting their magnificent self-titled work in 2004) has made freakish the many sumptuous melodies bleeding from this record.

Willie Nelson is no stranger to others covering his songs. In fact that was his career back when the singer and the songwriter were two separate cogs in the entertainment machine. In 1956 Willie sold his song ‘Family Bible’ to a man in a Houston bar for $50. A year later Claude Gray recorded the song, it was a hit and has since become a country standard. Poor Willie didn’t see a cent. Soon after, he went on to write his enduring classic ‘Hello Walls‘. Willie did get royalties this time though it was still recorded and remembered as being the more living room friendly Faron Young‘s. He went on to write ‘Night Life‘, made famous by Ray Price and supposedly the most recorded country song of all time (even Charles Manson had a crack), along with the massive ‘Crazy’ for Patsy Cline as well as songs for Roy Orbison amongst others.

It was only once country music shed its Nudie suits and honky-tonk sound in the seventies that Willie got his big break as an artist in his own right, riding the outlaw country wave with Waylon Jennings and his ilk.

So it’s certainly true to say Willie isn’t afraid of others singing his songs leaving the question of whether the younger artist is afraid of covering Willie and whether they can do something original with songs that they obviously hold dear. Phosphorescent’s Mathew Houck has a good crack.

He stays clear of the early Nelson country songs focusing instead on the hard living, hard drinking, sometimes regretful Willie of the 70s onwards. The album opens with the drugs lament ‘Reasons to Quit’ that Willie recorded with Merle Haggard in the 80s, and Houck’s voice adds a certain wistless emotional quality to the song that those big AM-country singers lack, probably because they never listened to grunge.

‘Too Sick to Pray’ is a perfectly good reading and ‘I Gotta Get Drunk’ ups the tempo with its fast moving shuffle, quite sensibly evoking those times when you’ve had a little too much bourbon. The slower elements of Phosphorescent’s previous albums emerge on ‘Can I Sleep in your Arms’ and ‘Heartaches of a Fool‘.

However, like with other covers projects by alt. country artists, most notably Bonnie Prince Billy’s 2006 effort with Tortoise, The Bold and the Brave., listening you understand why they chose the song in the first place (taste is generally impeccable in alt. country) but then you figure why shouldn’t I be listening to the original. A couple of cheap compilations later the covers record is confined to bottom of the pile and deleted from the iPod.

I just hope Willie got his royalty cheque.