IN 2013, Porches released a beautiful record called Slow Dance in the Cosmos that assuredly fell in the indie-rock category. Since then, Porches—the project of New York songwriter Aaron Maine—has shifted its sound. Maine started to teach himself how to record and edit on his own using Logic software. Perhaps more dramatically he began experimenting with synths and modern pop/R&B drum beats.
“I was feeling a little restless in the slower rock genre,” says Maine. “I wanted people to be able to dance to the music. There would be this moment [during a show] when the DJ would be playing, people would be getting down to it, but then we’d go on and the shift of the mood was so drastic. I felt bad demanding this different sort of attention from the audience.”
This change in Maine’s sound manifests itself on Pool, the LP Porches released in February. The album is Porches’ cleanest to date, even garnering the coveted “Best New Music” designation by Pitchfork. It’s a record typified as much by its densely packaged songwriting as its chic, sad-Brooklynite aesthetic. In the video for the single “Be Apart,” the band is seen despondently playing ping-pong and drinking milk while wearing matching black turtlenecks inside a beautiful New England mansion (everyone looks like Greek sculptures in hip clothing). The entire group is stone-faced during a song that, at its core, is about feeling disconnected in an overwhelmingly huge city that Maine just wants to be a part of.