C'est La Vie

C’est La Vie once again finds Houck creating sumptuous soundscapes of scorched Americana that range from slow burning laments to tipsy waltzes, but this time around with a renewed flow and finesse.

This is still Phosphorescent. It’s just that the man behind the wheel is older and a little bit wiser these days. C’est La Vie is bookended by instrumental tracks. ... In between, Houck’s songs are are consistently wide-eyed and wondrous.

Everything you loved about the last few Phosphorescent records is still here, in abundance, but C’est La Vie seems more streamlined, more emotionally sincere. You can hear that Houck has discovered a lot of love in the past five years, and you only hope we get to hear him discover a tonne more.

Rather than being a tearjerker, C'est la Vie instead serves as something of a safeguard, a protective companion, a generous friend down paths of memory we may never have intended to traverse again, and that we'd shudder to travel alone. Phosphorescent's music is as giving and truly kind as ever.

What distinguishes C’est La Vie is Houck’s command of his material: there’s nothing here that sounds tentative or uncertain.

Some listeners may find the album a touch monotonous, and whilst there are certainly no disco breakdowns, there are wrinkles in the formula.

There is no successor to “Zula” on C’est La Vie, but that doesn’t make it a lesser album. The album is bookended with two expansive instrumentals; Fleet-Foxy harmonies and gently cycling guitar propel “Black Moon : Silver Waves,” and closer “Black Waves : Silver Moon” lifts high on rolling percussion and Houck’s keening falsetto. The rest of the songs occupy the flexible, fertile territory of not quite country, folk, or rock.

This has been billed as his most reflective album, a chance to make connections across his musical career but there’s a quiet confidence too, delivering some of his most intricate arrangements and roaming far beyond the Americana tag that he was often filed under. C’est La Vie just goes to show, you never can tell.

What makes this nine-track/45-minute LP so fascinating is just how many ideas Houck injects into it, throwing layers of piano, wordless backing vocals and ambient effects into the mix.

C'est La Vie is as potent, visceral and concise a sonic expression of this act of courage [step up and be an adult] as you could hope to find. [Nov 2018, p.87]

The result is his slickest and best-produced record yet: all warm beats, electric piano and weeping, reverb-y pedal steel. [Nov 2018, p.113]

Though nothing else on the album quite sounds like that first single (or hits the same giddiness), the Simon similarity runs deep. Houck’s narrator is often sly, wry, and conversational.

At first this can feel less immediate than previous work, but much like Phosphorescent's winding journey, C'est La Vie burns slowly and leaves impressions both spiritual and sonic that merit repeat listens.

There’s gorgeous, candid song-craft at work, ‘C’est La Vie 2’ urging that “they say that love is easy if you let it be”. That self-reflection runs like a golden thread, particularly on the woozy ‘These Rocks.’

C’est La Vie doesn’t thrum with the roiling tension of Muchacho, but in finding a sense of serenity and calm in whatever life throws at him, Houck strikes a balance between happiness and longing that’s often nothing short of sublime.

Graceful optimism suits him well, though in exploring this new phase, he struggles to properly articulate how his past behavior ultimately shaped his present.

Though life has its shadows still (the motorik psych-country epic Round the Horn, the vocoder lament Christmas Down Under), the core of C’est La Vie is radiant happiness, Houck’s familiar sounds buffed to a transcendent shine.