Phosphorescent is not one of my all-time favorite bands, but it is certainly one that I love to listen to and believe is definitely worth seeing live.  Phosphorescent gave a great performance at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro on Monday.

In the spring of 2013, Phosphorescent released its newest album, Muchacho, and began to tour. The Triangle won a spot in Phosphorescent’s Muchacho 2013World Tour.

After the warm-up band, the audience grew in size and began to come closer to the stage, waiting in excitement and anticipation. The audience’s excitement did not go anywhere, but instead seemed to grow exponentially as the band walked on stage and got to its spots. Instantly, Phosphorescent began playing “Terror in the Canyons (The Wounded Master)” to begin its show and the audience began to dance and clap.

Matthew Houck leads Phosphorescent as its primary singer and lead musician. His full voice along with the indie, southern music and deep, thoughtful lyrics in his albums show that he is an extremely talented musician. However, to get that indie music live, he does need help from other band members, which he brought along with him on stage.

Along with lead singer and lead guitarist Houck, there were two pianists, a bass guitarist, a drummer, a tambourine/bongo player and a back-up electric guitarist. The seven talented musicians brought energy, excitement to the stage.

The audience appeared engaged after two back-to-back upbeat songs and Phosphorescent continued to be draw the crowd during the slower song that followed, “A New Anhedonia,” was performed. The atmosphere felt more serious and solemn, but the audience still remained concentrated on Houck. It was hard not to—Houck expressed his emotions so well through his lyrics and voice that it seemed like I was feeling and thinking his words too. Phosphorescent is notorious for sad-sounding music, but I think that’s what makes it seem so real and relatable to its audience. 

The concert did not lose steam when, soon after, the band performed “Song for Zula,” its most popular song on Muchacho. Like most concerts, the audience went crazy during the most popular song, singing loudly and dancing wildly. I’m used to bands’ biggest hit being more upbeat and fast, but what was different with this concert is that Phosphorescent’s most popular song is a sad, serious one about being heart-broken. You wouldn’t expect the audience to get that excited by such a depressing song, but with Phosphorescent it was hard not to be because the atmosphere was filled with the raw emotions and the intense music playing all around.

About five more songs played that were mostly from Muchacho and it continued to be just as fun and energetic for me throughout the set and it felt like the music came alive.

Phosphorescent played the common trick of pretending like they are done then waiting for enough shouting and clapping to come back out again for an encore. I’m getting pretty tired of this cliché part of concerts, but Phosphorescent actually did something that surprised me. Phosphorescent had an encore set, but instead of the whole band coming back out, only Houck appeared. He once again thanked the crowd for coming out and began to play one of Phosphorescent’s most well known songs, “Wolves,” alone with just his electric guitar.

Seeing just Houck on stage was such an incredible experience. The live back-up music was great, but seeing Houck perform alone showed how talented he is as a sole musician. Once the chorus of the song was played, one of the lead pianists subtly came on stage and lightly sang back-ups with Houck, really adding more edge to the song. It surprised me once again at the end when Houck did an interesting trick with the song—while he sang the lyrics, his recorded-over voice played loudly in the background repeating the lyrics, “to wait till those wolves make nice,” ending the song in a strangely powerful way.

Following the first encore, the pianist exited stage and left Houck alone again. He then performed a cover song called “Far from Me” by John Prine. He mentioned how much he loved the song and it was easy to tell once he started playing. He played this song like it was his own with so much intensity. I believe this song was my favorite from the whole night because it gave me the chance to see Houck singing with feeling in all of his solo glory.

Then finally, the concert ended, and with quite a bang I might add. After the cover song, the rest of the band came back on stage and played, “Down to Go,” form Muchacho. They each played their hardest, with parts of the drum set falling off the stand and Houck getting tangled in the microphone’s cords. The song finished and the band stood, thanked us and was done. I left feeling more impressed by Phosphorescent than ever before.