The latest releases reviewed.
PHOSPHORESCENT Dead Oceans****
To Willie
Phosphorescent is one-man band Matthew Houck, and this album is his tribute to the great Willie Nelson. And what a great tribute it is. Houck is an American singer- songwriter with a track record perched smack on the borders of alt.country and new folk. Even so, tribute collections can be graveyards. It’s hard to strike a winning note between fawning repetition and inspired reinvention. Houck, however, has dug deep into the Nelson catalogue and come up with 11 songs, some better known than others, but all treated with respect for the original laced with Houck’s own flavours. There are lots of sweet country affectations – the lonely steel, the warm harmonies, the hangdog attitude – all swathed in Houck’s atmospheric production. But best of all is the way he lives these songs of loneliness and regret.
[ www.deadoceans.comOpens in new window ]
Download tracks: Reasons to Quit, Walkin, The Party's Over
MORIARTY
Gee Whiz But This Is a Lonesome Town Naive****
“It’s a comedelirium. We rarely get under the wire. But sometimes we win the lion’s share. We like to fly light and we most enjoy technocracy. Sometimes we close our shutters, spread our underpinnings and watch the fireflies roam about. Other times, we just get all loco and shift our heart.” So goes the biog of this Franco-US combo based in France but with a manic musical heart lodged deep in Americana. It is new folk with strains of blues, country, jazz, music hall and whatever you’re having yourself tossed in. It’s either winningly surreal with a smile on its face and a tune on its lips or more confected weirdness from a bunch of middle-class students on a European skite. I fancy the former, with Rosemary Stanley’s strong irony-dripping voice a delight. By the way, no real Irish connection – the Moriarty moniker is a tribute to Jack Kerouac’s hero.
www.myspace. com/moriartylands
Download tracks: Jimmy, Private Lily, Oshkosh Bend
