But there’s a newfound wisdom, too, a deeper well for all that livin’. And C’est La Vie does have a hefty, career-spanning feel. Recorded in Nashville at Matthew Houck’s own Spirit Sounds Studio, C’est La Vie reveals a crystallization of what made Muchacho such a breakout - a little sweetness and a little menace, sometimes boot-stomping and sometimes meditative.Ī lot of life was lived between these records: Houck became a father (twice), built his studio, escaped New York. Now, five years later, Phosphorescent returns with his seventh studio LP, C’est La Vie. Then came Muchacho, a juggernaut that to date has sold over 100,000 worldwide, with lead single “Song for Zula” now well over 50 million streams. "For years, Phosphorescent’s rise was a steady one: tours got a little better, rooms got a little bigger, and with it the music became more intricate, more ambitious in its recording and arrangement. I'm going to go off and analyse some other song that doesn't excite such strange reactions from me.) (Or possibly do some work! I have a paper to write.)Īnd regarding the spam filter, I feared that would happen but in the event, I spent those 9 hours away from the internet anyway, so no harm done.First new Phosphorescent album in 5 years, Matthew Houck's most grand and varied album to date. (.I am now being way too unfair to the poor songwriter, I think. If we assume Zula is a genderless alien psychopath, possibly written by Gene Wolfe, everything becomes clear! It also occurs to me that perhaps we have gotten the genre of the song wrong. (Or a robot, but it's hard to get that across in a song.) I wonder if the songwriter put that in out of an understanding that even if you have to reject love in some situation, turning from love makes you inhuman and savage, and the glories left to you are the glories of an animal. You can turn away from love and goodness and become like the animals, or become like a demon, but if you want any other options you're left with the Freddy Nietzsche option of waving your hands a bit and talking vaguely of the Superman. I know you're probably right and the rejection of love is not absolute, just situational but the songwriter's made the song slightly too beautiful, it's hard to see it in anything other than absolute terms.Īlso, it's interesting that the singer-persona is presenting itself as turning away from love to become something more animalistic - the third verse in particular. I hadn't looked at it like that, as an entirely reasonable fear of the destructive potential of love - which I can pretty much relate to I was too busy experiencing it as an unholy assault on love and goodness, a Nietzsche-like proclamation of transcending worthless lesser values and becoming a glorious and beautiful sociopath. That's a far more benevolent reading of the song than mine. And the song presents that face of love very powerfully to me.Īlso, that last verse: I'm departing completely from the song here, but as a result of what the earlier verses suggested, the last one made me think of Jesus before Pilate and the mob-jeered at, apparently weak and helpless, but with all that power that he nevertheless conceals and doesn't use. It does sometimes seem like a killer come to call. That's the only way it can work for us in our fallen state. Intense romantic love is certainly sweet but even if it works out it will sooner or later take you someplace pretty uncomfortable, the perfect image of that being a woman in labor.
Real love, human or divine, is catclysmic. I'm thinking not only of eros, which presumably is what the song's actually about, but God's love, which threatens so much of what we want ourselves to be and what we want to happen. What I hear in the song that's so powerful to me is the imagery of love as appearing to us as a terrible destroying force. The song itself seems to me to be a broken-heart song, so I wouldn't take those bitter sentiments ("I will not open myself up again.etc.") as the end of the story.
My lunch breaks have to be short these days, and every time I plan to write something during one of them I realize that I can't type while I'm eating, and then only have a few minutes left after I finish eating.
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