Matthew Houck returns amid a lush orchestral backdrop and drum-machine rhythm section for our first taste of his new Phosphorescent record, Muchacho. “Song for Zula” is one of 10 cuts born “in the middle of a bit of a freak-out,” he says, a “domestic crisis” that found him booking a same-day flight to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula to finish new material last winter. It’s fitting, then, that pushing on in the face of heartbreak is a lyrical theme in this tune, where “you will not see me fall, nor see me struggle to stand,” Houck sings, adding in the refrain: “You see, the cage, it called. I said, ‘Come on in.’ I will not open myself up this way again.” Tracked mostly at his new home (and new home studio) in NYC this May, the LP arrives next March via Dead Oceans. A gorgeous start, preview the single above and song titles below:
Muchacho Tracklist
01. “Sun, Arise! (An Invocation, An Introduction)”
02. “Song for Zula”
03. “Ride On/Right On”
04. “Terror in the Canyons (The Wounded Master)”
05. “A Charm/ A Blade”
06. “Muchacho’s Tune”
07. “A New Anhedonia”
08. “The Quotidian Beasts”
09. “Down to Go”
10. “Sun’s Arising (A Koan, An Exit)”