In Profile: Phosphorescent

Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck is back with Revelator, a new album of nine original songs that marks his debut for Verve Records.

Grappling with the quiet obstacles and unspoken truths that come with the gravity of navigating home, partnership and family, Revelator ruminates on questions that can be difficult to answer: why a seemingly idyllic life can be defined by an ambient sense of dread, or the natural ways we drift from each other and from ourselves. But true to its title, this is a work intent on finding hard-won reclamation, reinvention and revelation in life's day-to-day. 

Check out the video for the title track to the new album; a ragged and ethereal sonic blend that channels the catharsis of wiping the slate clean and laying it bare to earnestly build anew. The video for Phosphorescent's "Revelator" finds Matthew Houck in a boat, alone in a dreamy, dusky twilight, steadfastly navigating the allegorical (and literal) river of life.

Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck on “Revelator”:

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