My interview with Phosphorescent's Matt Houck, which I was pretty excited about and which, upon reading it a couple of months later, still sounds pretty damned good to me, ran today at PopMatters.
Phosphorescent: Peeling Back the Surface
By Jennifer Kelly 30 June 2010
“The Mermaid Parade,” off the new Here’s to Taking It Easy, just might be Matt Houck’s best song yet, a sprawling narrative of melancholy and regret and mystery that feels like, a short story or a novel. Its storyline traces the dissolution of a brief marriage, the husband away touring, while his wife takes up with an older, married man. Lyrically, the song is utterly realistic and modern, heartfelt without veering into sentimentality and all the more powerful for its blunt, unornamented language. Yet it is the chorus, drawing inspiration from the boardwalks of Coney Island in its parade of naked mermaids that really catches the ear. Houck’s words tap into a vein verging on magical realism, using the street and its denizens to evoke a mythological dimension. That sense, of other, weirder, wilder worlds lurking just beyond the threshold of our perception is what lies at the core of Phosphorescent’s music.
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"Mermaid Parade"
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3 comments:
That was good. Does this mean they'll let you interview more often?
Thanks Andrew, but no, unfortunately. There's no sign that my stuff is of any value to PopMatters these days.
They held this one for almost two months and only ran it after the label asked about it.
On the bright side, I'm interviewing Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby for them pretty soon.
That's too bad. Hope that the Rigby interview goes well. I've wondered what she's been up to.
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