Phosphorescent: 'Dying is the most normal thing every one of us will do'

Since his last album, the Americana songwriter has had two children and almost died of meningitis. Little wonder he’s confronting his mortalityEight years ago, Matthew Houck had made some pretty big changes in his life. He’d gone from making cracked, vulnerable songs on his own to playing full-throated, big-hearted Americana, accompanied by an unruly band he described as “a bag of puppies”. Where Houck’s earliest gigs were wobbly affairs in dark basement bars, he wa