Laura Kerry
“Think I'll go somewhere else / Where I can see into myself / Just watch me go.”
Aaron Maine of Porches sings these lines in a desperate tone that peaks in a vulnerable falsetto as synths swirl and a dance beat pumps beneath him. From the second song, “Find Me,” off of his new work, The House, this moment perfectly encapsulates the album and—if the songs are any indication—the space (both physical and mental) in which Maine wrote it.
Maine’s third full-length as Porches, The House picks up where his last album, Pool, leaves off, continuing to draw from a palette of danceable synths and beats to create surprisingly reflective and dreamy tunes—a departure from his more straightforwardly rock roots. Perhaps a result of newly living alone and mostly recording alone, though, the new album feels quieter and, as the lines from “Find Me” suggest, more introspective.
Beginning with Maine’s bare falsetto singing the surrender “Let it have me,” The House is an intimate experience. In lyrics such as “It's my fault / This I know / It's just hard to swallow” (“By My Side”), “I wonder if you think about me / Not anymore” (“Anymore”), and “I like the thought you think of me” (“Goodbye”), it reads as a breakup album (a reasonable read, considering that Maine wrote it in the aftermath of a breakup). This sentiment reflects in the expressive sadness of Maine’s voice, which is beautiful when allowed to shine.
Elsewhere, though, The House reads as more hopeful. These moments emerge in his odes to love, albeit filled with a dejected kind of longing (“Anything you want / Anything you need / Anything at all / I love you,” he sings in the final song, “Anything U Want”), and in the bright, warm combinations of electronic instruments that demand movement in response.
Sometimes, these two opposing strains feel at odds with one another. In the muddiness on “Swimmer,” the stab of deep bass that feels wedged in on “By My Side,” and a few unnecessary uses of auto-tune (those in which he fails to use it in intriguing contrast to the rawness of the other elements in his songs), Porches’ introspection can occasionally fail to mesh with the sounds that surround it.
When it works, though, it does so to an incredibly satisfying degree. On “Goodbye,” for example, Porches alternates between a bouncy synth melody and a somber piano ballad. As his voice rises, the two parts join, welcoming a gentle but crisp beat and a light touch of guitar, and later, a disco riff and house beat. Here and in many other moments on The House, Maine simultaneously manages to deliver a dose of emotional strife and its antidote, catharsis.