The close-harmony hymn set to a pulsating synth loop that kicks off Muchacho, Phosphorescent’s latest record, caught me off guard. This was an artist of the warm and full Southern sound, in my head, and this track is very minimalistic. Luckily, he pulls it off well. One song later, everything is back to normal with the long-winding Song for Zula. His previous record has been described as country soul, which made me realize that I really like country soul (or country funk, for that matter). It is a combination unlikely on first glance, and very reasonable upon the next. I would even propose a new genre for Muchacho’s Song: country doo-wop.
You have to really follow the words closely to realize Zula is a song of heartbreak. Of general heartbreak, I think, of something lost beyond a single relationship. “I saw love disfigure me into something I am not recognizing.” He goes on to say love trapped him, and that he has become suspicious, less open to it. It’s a beautiful, smooth song, which makes it all the more tragic – the oldest trick in the book, it puts me to mind of Eleanor Rigby for instance, which is also a string-laden tale of disillusion, but it still works wonders.
Right On / Ride On is really the kind of thing I was expecting here, a continuation of his last record. A sort of straightforward, funky Americana with a lot of heart but not necessarily the storytelling aspect that is so important to the genre. Alternating Right and Ride as the title suggests, I also hear both ‘ain’t nothing will last’ and ‘nevertheless’, and both ‘hate’ and ‘hey you’ to ‘turn him right/ride on’. I am not sure if those quips are on purpose or just ambiguity introduced by my own mind, but I like the idea of it.
This theme of duality, of one thing replacing the other, and back again, is further developed in the next song. ‘I was the wounded master, then I was the slave / I was the holy writer, then I was the page.’ That is what has passed, but what is yet to come can also go both ways: ‘I could be forever or just a couple of days’. And after this, if only to prove my point, we are launched right into another doubly named song, viz. A Charm / A Blade.
The theme of heartbreak introduced in Zula is omnipresent. When it comes to the heart there is no hiding behind metaphors.
Cut my heart but do it fast
You’re telling me my heart’s sick,
and I’m telling you I know
The reference to anhedonia suggests an apathy of sorts has followed from the heartbreak. ‘All the music’s now boring to me,’ is how you know you’re really in trouble (I worriedly call to mind The Libertines, who preached that ‘if you lose your faith in love and music, the end won’t be long’).
The album is bookended by two tracks that sum it all up, that have both the duality and the heartbreak, and show very clearly that this album, as is often with artists, is a psychological process, is about shaking off his blues. Whereas the introduction is an invocation for the sun to rise, a plea, a good forty minutes later the sun is, in fact, rising.
Ease, be easy, oh.
