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Apr 08, 2024 Web Exclusive By Michael James Hall

On Matthew Houck’s first album of originals in six years, he steps away from the glistening, quicksilver chimes of 2018’s C’est La Vie. Stripping back both musically and melodically, Houck proffers a record both wracked with anxiety and comforting in its shared sorrow.

The opening, title track reassures us that Houck hasn’t entirely abandoned melody in favor of misery. As a steel pedal mourns over a soft shoe shuffle, he can’t resist crafting affecting lines such as “I don’t even like what I write / I don’t even like what I like any more” with an insistent, memorable lilt.

Thematically, nothing is neat and tidy here, but Houck carves couplets from the chaos, as on “Fences,” a relationship dissection that sees him detail, “The stars were out to shine but you were way gone / I saw it in the way you laced your shoe.”

Restraint is key on Revelator, as evidenced on “Impossible House,” which opens up briefly into orchestral wonder before retreating again into sleepy, graceful simplicity.

The measured pace, interrupted only briefly by the sweet violin fancy of “A Moon Behind the Clouds,” will frustrate some, and the length of songs like “Wide As Heaven,” a slowdance at the end of the world, could be termed indulgent—but it’s ultimately an album to slip into, all graceful and sleepy, Houck guiding the listener across rocky lyrical terrain with a sad and simple musical refrain.

Houck looks outward, away from the deeply personal, on “The World Is Ending,” written by Houck’s partner Jo Schornikow, an elegant assessment of the end times we seem to be living through: “Until they send some scientist to come and prove me wrong / I know the world is ending.”

Similarly, a broader view is taken on the delicious “A Poem on the Men’s Room Wall,” which boasts the smartest, most philosophical lyrics on the album, declaring “Hidden lies and alibis…Open skies and darkened eyes” as “all the same” in a stoic, almost beatific chant. Here the drums break into life, shifting from keeping time to cracking through it, and it’s a pleasurably dynamic moment.

Optimism arrives just at the bell on closer “To Get It Right,” with wry lines such as “Fear is the mind killer / Beer is the fear killer / This beer is killer,” as Houck lifts the veil of melancholy to reveal a gentle grin.

Revelator is a careful but honest album, a lingering, languorous sojourn that offers strange solace even as its world falls apart. (www.phosphorescentmusic.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10