Porches' All Day Gentle Hold ! topped my list of favorite albums released last year. The fifth record by New York-based musician Aaron Maine clocks in at under thirty minutes, but it uses every second to whip up songs that oscillate between being punchy and guitar-heavy ("Grab The Phone") and reflective and synth-driven ("Inasint"). Maine often rearranges the guts of pop music, squishing them into more interesting patterns. Like how the bright, poppy "Okay," with its lyrics stinging from a breakup, could easily work for a star like Harry Styles looking for a more edgy radio hit. Or how in "Swimming Big," Maine moodily interpolates Sonic Youth's opening line of "Bull in the Heather"—"Ten, twenty, thirty, forty"—and throws it over a mid-tempo, bass-heavy track that explodes into a collision of guitars. Seattle will get a chance to see the magic of Porches IRL when the band plays Neumos on Friday, April 1 with LA-based musician Alaska Reid opening. Don't miss it.
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