Here's to Taking It Easy

"Apart from the things I touched/Nothing got broke all that much," sings Matthew Houck on "Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me Foolishly)," a harmony-laced heartbreaker on his fifth album. Houck, the Brooklyn-via-Georgia songwriter who performs as Phosphorescent, nails the ramble-tamble country-rock sound of Gram Parsons and Neil Young records, mixing rockers like the sax-fueled boogie "It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're From Alabama)" with elegantly bummed ballads like "The Mermaid Parade," a slow-mo lament about a bicoastal affair gone wrong. You might feel like you've heard some of Here's to Taking It Easy before, but Houck is skillful enough that you probably won't mind hearing it again.