Phosphorescent’s new album, Pride, has been out for a few months now, and most of the internet world has unanimously sung it’s praises, calling it “Bonnie Prince” this and “Will Oldham” that. Yeah, yeah, we get that it sounds like him, but there’s much much more going on throughout the forty minutes of this ghostly record. Obviously. There always is. I’ve seen too many reviews dropping names to go along with their description of this one and fuck, I do it constantly, but I guess I’ve become so attached to Pride that I refuse to compare it to anything else musically at this point. Now it just sounds like a long walk down a creaking old house. It’s winter, it’s dark, and you’re trying to make sense of a place that you don’t really understand. The record sounds like some people you might know, but you can’t place them, and you don’t want to. It sounds like the beach in January.
Although Pride is a true record, and works together as a whole, “The Waves At Night” is a highlight off the album for me. Granted, this song, like each song, is only itself when in the context of the record, Matthew Houck (the man behind the record) and Liz Durrett, an Athens, GA friend, sing like their voices were born to be wrapped around each other. It doesn’t even sound like harmony at some points and might be some of the best four minutes and twenty seconds that I’ve enjoyed in a long while. If there was ever evidence that heaven existed…
If you don’t have Pride already, you’re not quite right. It’s the year’s best album, the year’s best moment, and will make you want this winter to last all year.
“A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise” MP3
