
Making his Newport Folk Festival debut next month, Alabamian turned Brooklynite Phosphorescent (a.k.a. Matthew Houck) is known for layering his folk songs with sonic textures. “Song for Zula” – the most popular song off of Houck’s latest album, Muchacho (Amazon MP3 & Spotify) – is loaded with keyboards and synthetic sounds making it just fine for this weekend’s Northside Festival in Brooklyn, but a bit of a stretch for a folk festival. While Newport has welcomed quite a few keyboards in recent years, a folker has got to wonder how Houck will play “Zula” next month.
I came across this stripped guitar-only down version of the song and a live version of the full-on keyboard version. Which one do you want, folkers?