Phosphorescent

“I got tired of sadness/ I got tired of all the madness/ I got tired of bein’ a badass all the time,” Matthew Houck sings on “Revelator,” the opener and title track of his latest Phosphorescent album. Houck was actively looking for something new, an epiphany, when the old ways stopped working. And just as the album Revelator only revealed itself to its author along the way, so too did real life revelations take their time answering the plaintive mission statement with which Houck reintroduces Phosphorescent.

By the time Revelator closes with “To Get It Right,” Houck hasn’t necessarily found an answer, but at least has resolved to keep searching for one. Sprawling out over seven minutes, “To Get It Right” is the latest Phosphorescent epic that leaves you just a bit transformed by its conclusion. After all these songs that show us how we can disappear from ourselves — how we drift from the people we love, how we lose sight of things we once knew — “To Get It Right” is a reclamation, the moment where you find your way back to some core truths while still carrying what you learned along the way.