Interview
Interview
Porches: “I was imagining these songs as my 13-year-old self”
Aaron Maine on the move towards making heavier, more "impossibly uniquely Porches" indie-rock on new album, Shirt
If you thought that Aaron Maine’s characteristically emotive but breezy brand of indie-rock as Porches had a sharper, scratchier edge than normal on 2021’s All Day Gentle Hold!, wait until you hear Shirt. The New York artist’s sixth studio album, released next month on Domino Records, is his most abrasive and heaviest yet, from the explosive chorus of ‘Sally’ to the grungy sulk of ‘Itch’.
But Shirt also features some of the best melodies Maine has written, often delivered with subtly off-kilter production or a warbled experimentation that demands the listener to pay attention. Together, Maine hopes to capture “the weight of your dreams crashing up against your reality.”
Ahead of a small string of UK headline shows to celebrate its release in September, Maine unpicks some of the stylistic and thematic forces that shape the ever-changing feel of Porches.
Tell us a bit about how Shirt started coming together after All Day Gentle Hold!
We went on this really beautiful tour off of All Day Gentle Hold! and it was like the first tour after thinking that maybe there would be no live music ever again. It was just totally blissed out, it felt really ecstatic the whole time. I feel like that band kind of was struck by lightning in this really special way, and I hadn’t felt like that in a while, that charged up. I think I sort of assumed it felt like that for everyone, but I think a lot of people came out of the pandemic and maybe felt they didn’t want to keep touring or, I don’t know, pursue music; like they kind of had a taste of what it felt like to not do that. And I felt lucky enough to feel recharged. So I set off to make Shirt, or make something which ended up being Shirt, and the initial inspiration was just that live energy. We were turning everything up and doing these sort of heavier, guitar driven arrangements of the songs, and I was screaming and pushing my voice to places that I hadn’t really pushed it to in a long time. That was starting point; to make something that would feel super raw and high intensity, like in a live setting.
Do you think the heavier, grungier side to the new album was a result of getting back with the band again and practicing in a garage like you’re a teenager again, or was it more of a stylistic choice?
I don’t think any decision I’ve ever made making music is conscious – I try and have it be subconscious, I guess. But yeah, it was sort of just wanting to take what All Day Gentle Hold! was, which was already sort of touching back on my roots as a rock musician, that’s how I learned how to play music and the first the songs I wrote were performed with a live three or four piece band. So something about that felt comforting and familiar, and just to touch that again, after exploring so many other sounds and instruments and genres and tempos and stuff like that… I feel like each record I have more tools to try and combine to make something that’s even stranger or more impossibly uniquely Porches than the last thing. So it was partially intentional, wanting to go with how it felt to play these songs live, and I think part of that was maybe more emotional, feeling comforted by distorted guitars because it’s familiar to me.
A press release says that the album “plays with the tension between one’s person and persona – the weight of your dreams crashing up against your reality.” In this light it sounds like an album made for someone in their 30s and that process of rebalancing life expectations and desires that comes during this time…
Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. That moment of reckoning where you are looking back and forward and in the middle of where you are. I also think getting a bit older, looking back with a different perspective changes. You read those scenes of childhood and innocence in a different way, and I felt like that was really interesting; for whatever reason, I felt like I was imagining a lot of these songs as my 13-year-old self, in the grass, and these crushes, and these little violent moments and these broad, dramatic, youthful feelings. It felt good to try and inhabit that space, I feel like that’s where the songs were coming from, in some abstract way.
I can totally see that on a song like ‘School’…
That’s such a special part of your life, I think. That wonder you have at that age, I don’t know if it’s bliss or, I don’t know, it’s super ripe with emotion. And yeah, then examining it from where I am now, and I think there’s a lot of anxiety throughout the record, even with the sounds and genres. I’m realising there’s a lot of push and pull and negating myself, or seeing what these two, in theory, “opposing” emotions or sounds or melodies feel like when you kind of push them up against one another. I think that is sort of a reflection of my personal anxiety and restlessness and fears and fantasies in my mind racing all the time. I was trying, I guess, to capture that or make a picture of that with this record.
You’ve been experimenting with your voice with each record, and certainly here too. Sometimes experimenting like that can just be fun and playful, but is there a sense of that playing into that balance of person and persona, does it help depict that duality?
Yeah, it’s sort of exploring this part of me that maybe in the past I was too scared to share with the world. It’s kind of aggressive and nasty and abrasive and ugly at times. I’ve been singing for a long time, and I think part of that is learning new things about my voice and what it can do, and trying to just always be bringing out some sort of new emotion or tapping into some new part of me that I haven’t figured out how to share or present to whoever’s listening. Something felt right about just going towards and embracing the unhinged-ness as opposed to, I don’t know, some people might try and learn how to make it as smooth and beautiful as possible, and I felt compelled for whatever reason to try and make it raw. There’s not a drop of reverb on any of the vocals, really. I would try throughout the record, thinking people use reverb all the time, maybe I should? I put it on and the second I took it off I was like “that’s right”. It just has to be super upfront so you can hear the gravel in my voice. I just wanted to make something that felt really raw, though it’s a cliche word.
When you’re writing a song do you ever think of it in relation to your other songs, even in a practical sense? Some of those scratchier tones presumably work well alternating with some of the smoother songs on Pool, for example.
It’s kind of funny putting together the Porches setlist as more albums come out, because some of them are just totally like a different band or something. I always want to play some staples that people want to hear, I imagine, at a Porches show, but at the same time, I’m just always trying to entertain myself and stay inspired and make something that feels creatively fulfilling. I think it’s pretty clear that I have never really had an idea, one idea, of what Porches is, and I feel lucky that people keep coming back and listening and not expecting it to sound like anything that I’ve made previously. It’s nice to get to explore every creative win I’ve had in the last ten years through Porches, and some people f*ck with certain albums, and some people don’t. I was thinking today, it’s nice to be myself, you know? I feel like a lot of artists pigeonhole themselves into doing this thing, and then they have to continue to be this thing even though they’re not that, and I imagine that would be kind of difficult.
On the topic of creative wins, it was a little while ago now but tell me about how your song ‘Country’ ended up on Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla?
Man, that was so amazing. I found out in the craziest way too, because we went on tour supporting Phoenix maybe two years ago and kept in touch with some of them. At one point, Christian, one of the guitar players, just asked me to send him the stems or instrumentals of ‘Country’, and I thought he just wanted to learn it or have it. I had no idea and I didn’t think anything of it. Then we went to see Phoenix and Beck at Madison Square Garden, and Sofia was there too, and the guitar player came up to me was like, “isn’t that so great about the song? We heard you have a new song in the movie!?”. I was like, “oh, no, I don’t think so. No one told me”. Then they kind of huddled and they’re like, “wait, wait, the song is definitely in the movie,” and they got scared that the information was wrong. Somehow that email slipped through the cracks and didn’t make it to me, but someone approved it. So I found out at the show that it was gonna be in Sofia Coppola’s new film. She has the most iconic soundtracks of our generation. It’s kind of what she’s also known for. That felt really great.
This isn’t necessarily new, but you’re continuing to go down this approach of succinct song and album writing – 25 minute albums, two-and-a-half minute songs. What is it you like about this approach?
It’s funny you mention that because yeah, people from my second Porches album have been pissed that the songs are short, but I just like a two-and-a-half minute song and that feels appropriate to me as far as how much literal time a song takes up of someone’s day. Something feels urgent and kind of punk about it to just like to deliver it like that and not be like, sit back, relax, and enjoy the soundscapes. I just wanted it to sort of have this pummelling feeling. That being said, I’ve been making some conscious decisions to try to hit a three-and-a-half minute song now.
Lastly, one of the standout tracks for me is the closer, ‘Music’. Tell me a bit about that; it feels almost like an affirmation of what you’re doing and what you decided to do with your life, or a manifesto or something?
Yeah, it’s definitely a deeply personal song based on my life as a musician and sort of the stock I’ve put into rock music and how I spend every single day of my life, like eight hours, every day, making music. And sort of how brilliant and absolutely gorgeous that is, and how insignificant it is at the same time. But in the context of Shirt, it doesn’t necessarily have to be me; I like the idea of this American Dream, like being a firefighter, astronaut, or rock star, coming to terms with what that means in the bigger picture of your time on this planet and stuff like that. So it is definitely self-referential, but I also feel like it sort of sums up this childhood reckoning, this type of broken, beautiful dream at the end of the record.
Shirt is released 13 September on Domino Records, available to preorder here
