Originating from the tradition of mysterious wanderers and ashen troubadours, Matthew Houck has created a not-all-the-time record. In fact, with its long echo choruses, creaky bedroom acoustics, and an eighteen minute field recording of a rainstorm, it's probably not a most-of-the-time record. The album reads like a wayward letter home, and moans in ways so Southern it can't be faked. Images of dusty roads are conjured, and the worn lonely drawl of Houck's voice feels and sounds genuine.

             Hearing Houck's assured delivery, it's not surprising to note that before launching Phosphorescent four years ago, Houck, fresh from a stint at college, spent time living out of his pickup, banging around the nation. "It probably has influenced me in a bunch of ways," Houck states, "but I'm not in a position to see that kind of cause and effect. It just is what it is and not what it's not, you know?"

             It's this hard earned authenticity that earns Houck a unique place among his peers. From the album opener, "Not a Heel," where the song's protagonist offers the sage warning, "I am not a monster, but I will eat your heart," with cracked Will Oldham-like intensity, to "Endless Part One," which contains the last lyrics on the album—"Is it long, my love until we rest, endless..." Aw Come Aw Wry draws detailed sketches in the dust of a journey haunted by the ghosts of past loves and regrets. A journey that bashfully finds solace and hope in the act of living.

             The theme of "aw come aw wry" presents itself several times throughout the album, somehow managing to encapsulate all the images the lyrics create. Popping up at different times during the record, it manages to sounds hesitant (the Calexico-like intro to "Not a Heel"), jubilant (the Casio beat on title track #6), and mournful (title track #3). It finally culminates in "Endless Part Two," where a choir of voices echoes out as a piano plinks out the theme one last time, calling out like gospel until it breaks and gives way to the sound of a soft Southern rain storm.

             "The 'aw come aw wry' theme presented itself about halfway through the recording of the album," Houck recalls. "It was something that felt true right away and then even truer as more attention was paid to it. It does, I think, make the thread that joins these songs together a little more explicitly."

             In the end, it's not the drunken Stax horns of "I'm a Full Grown Man (I Will Lay in the Grass All Day)," or the charming lyrics about living on watermelon and beer, or the slow burn intensity that colors songs like "Dead Heart" and "Lost Name," or any of the other subtle and effective flourishes that decorate the album—it's not these things that make Aw Come Aw Wry so noteworthy. It's the simple beauty of the album's theme, both lyrically and musically, that creates such a lasting impression.

             I understand that a record this thick and consuming is not perfect at all times. And I'm sure a few eyes would roll at Houck's Gordon Gano-meets-Jim James, shaky, tattered voice. But it's my firm belief that the next time someone spends the entire night trying to figure out what they believe or who they love or they're feeling the pangs of homesickness, it's right then, that's when they're going to need Aw Come Aw Wry.