Phosphorescent Returns With First Album in 5 Years, Shares New Song: Listen

Phosphorescent has announced Revelator, his debut album for Verve and first studio LP since 2018’s C’est la Vie. The news comes with the release of the title track, along with a video in which Matthew Houck sings on a contemplative row down a river. Check that out below.

Of the song, Houck said in press materials:

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

Houck recorded the new album at his Nashville studio with collaborators including the Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence, the Dirty Three’s Jim White, and the singer-songwriter and pianist Jo Schornikow, who is Houck’s partner. Schornikow wrote a song called “The World Is Ending” for the album—the first Phosphorescent track to be written by an outside artist.

Jamie Kents, the president of Verve, added in a press release, “Our label is full of long time admirers of Matthew’s, and it’s a real thrill to welcome him to the Verve Forecast family and to have the opportunity to release an album of this caliber to the world.”

Between C’est la Vie and Revelator, Phosphorescent released an EP of BBC sessions and recorded a series of monthly covers dubbed The Full Moon Project.