"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.

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."