TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 4-5:30 PM
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
911 N. University Avenue
WALLACE HOUSE PRESENTS
BRET
STEPHENS
NEW YORK TIMES
COLUMNIST
Co-sponsored by U-M College
of Literature, Science, and the Arts
wallacehouse.umich.edu
FREE SPEECH AND THE NECESSITY OF DISCOMFORT
“I
don’t
really
know,
actually,” said Aaron Maine, the
mastermind
behind
Porches,
taking a long, patient pause. “I
don’t even know how to describe
it in a lot of words,” he finished,
after I asked him to describe
The House, his third official
full-length album and second
for Domino Recording. It wasn’t
quite the answer I expected, but
it reveals the personal necessity
of his art. If he could have said
what he needed to say with The
House any other way, he would
have. There is no way for him to
condense his truth any further.
Maine tours with the band,
but it’s no secret that he’s the
project’s
creative
force.
He
wrote every song on The House
aside
from
“Understanding,”
penned and performed by his
father, Peter Maine. This track
and several others reflect what
seems to be a fresh branching
out in Maine’s creative process.
Dev Hynes of Blood Orange joins
him on leading single “Country,”
Alex Giannascoli of (Sandy)
Alex G on “Leave the House”
and his girlfriend Kaya Wilkins
— who performs as Okay Kaya
and recently appeared in the
Norwegian supernatural horror-
thriller “Thelma” — on “Åkeren,”
among others.
When I ask Maine how some
of these collaborations came
about, one story is more than I
could’ve asked for. He and Alex
G had been crossing paths for a
time, being more or less in the
same scene, before they went on
a month-long tour in 2016.
“It was right when I got back
from that that I invited him
over to sing on the record and
we ended up with (‘Leave The
House’),” Maine said, and as
for Wilkins: “I had been a fan,
and wanted to have her voice
on (the record), and we ended
up with (‘Åkeren’).” Originally
a poem by Maine, Wilkins
translated the piece, whose title
means “cornfield,” to her native
Norwegian.
As for Blood Orange: “I’ve
known Dev for maybe four years
now,” Maine said. “We started
hanging out playing ping pong
at this spot called Fat Cat in the
West Village.”
Speaking to Maine is much
like listening to him sing. His
words are measured, his speech
economic. At first, I thought it
was because he was annoyed or
bored with my questions, but I
quickly learned that it’s just who
he is. Which is why his meeting
Hynes over ping pong is even
more humorously disarming —
it’s hard to imagine him doing
anything as quick as playing table
tennis, where there isn’t time to
be careful, to stop and think.
As we talk, it becomes only
more and more evident that this
intentionality lies at the core
of every step Maine takes as an
artist, from the first penning
of
lyrics
to
their
eventual
performance.
Part of this deliberateness
might just be connected to
Maine’s
ostensible
obsession
with water (see: 2016 LP Pool,
EP Water and The House’s “Now
The
Water,”
“Country”
and
“Swimmer”).
“It’s a topic I honestly didn’t
quite realize how often I was
coming back to,” Maine said,
following up with a theory he
has devised. “When I sit down to
write, one of the first things I try
to do is give the setting. A lot of
the time, water seems to be one of
the best descriptors, whether it’s
the temperature or the humidity
or the precipitation or what
you’re drinking.”
Here, water is a solution to
a practical problem, but it’s
more than just a tool to describe
surroundings.
“It’s
a
spiritual
thing,
sometimes, to be submerged …
you’re suspended in this thing
and all the sound disappears and
kind of reminds you that you’re
small,” Maine added.
There’s something very fitting,
too, about the ubiquity of water in
Maine’s discography. “Humid” is
a word to which I often return to
describe his art, both musically
and
visually.
Pool
and
The
House are both masterclasses in
balancing the nostalgic and the
synthetic, perfect soundtracks
for late summer nights. He’s
branded his music “dark muscle,”
which I think is likely a different
way of saying the same thing.
Hollow-sounding
synths
and
percussion
provide
forward
motion, while Maine’s voice
soars above it all, syrupy and
lackadaisical, but loaded with
emotion and yearning.
“I do think that it has always
been my tendency to write in a
more economic way, even when
I first started writing songs and,
I think, I had less control over
what came out … it is something
that I’ve tried to embrace, or find
myself inclined to keep coming
back to,” Maine said. “I don’t
know, just talking about things
through
seemingly
mundane
objects or subjects.”
He also notes that his writing
style tends to partially mimic
whatever author he happens to
be reading at the time, or an artist
who’s dominating his listening.
“I think for (Slow Dance in)
the Cosmos I was reading a lot
of Frank O’Hara poetry.” Then
he laughs, “I don’t know if,
you know, I’m not saying that
it actually sounds like Frank
O’Hara,” Maine finished, ever
the humble artist.
While he was developing The
House, he says he was really
getting into Alex G’s catalog
for the first time, and praises
Giannascoli’s
free-association,
stream-of-consciousness style of
writing.
“It’s like I can imagine him
writing the whole thing in one
swoop … the way he keeps the
channel open is so effective and
eerie and telling of what goes
on in his head,” Maine told me.
Listening to Giannascoli’s 2015
breakout Beach Music partially
inspired Maine to start keeping a
more regular journal.
“Since then I’ve just been
writing every day, kind of diary-
ish stuff, and then some of that
will turn into poems or stories or
songs.”
Later in our conversation,
though, we touched on the
difference,
or
lack
thereof,
between poetry and music.
“In terms of writing and the
distinction between poetry and
songs, I don’t … there’s not a line
that I draw necessarily though
I release music so that’s kind of
where the poems go.”
But not all of his poems evolve
into songs, and even the ones
that do are edited, cut down to
fit the track’s melodic structure.
So what happens to the lyrics we
never hear?
“I have been collecting the
stuff that doesn’t make it into the
songs … and I am really interested
in putting out some sort of thing
that resembles poetry at some
point,” Maine answered. “I have
a hard time even calling it that,
because I know it’s such a thing
of its own. I would hesitate to call
myself a poet but I would like to
put these things out to be read by
whoever’s interested.”
Earlier, Maine said that one
of the first things he does when
writing is try to give the setting.
Another go-to writing strategy
lies
in
creating
characters,
alter egos, for himself. On The
House, you’ll hear more than
one mention of his latest, Ricky
(Pepsi) and his partner, Julie.
Maine
has
also
previously
donned the name Ronnie or
Ronald Paris and, though the
names in and of themselves don’t
seem to bear significance, they
do help him to click into the right
mindset.
“I think that each ego or
character, for me, represents the
current version of myself that
feels like it needs a distinction
from the rest,” he said.
He also noted his appreciation
for the artistic space afforded by
having “a clean slate as (each)
new character,” and though he
doesn’t necessarily attempt to
assume those characters onstage,
“if it’s feeling good, I do feel very
transported.”
“It doesn’t happen with all the
songs, and it doesn’t happen all
the time, but there are certain
moments where I really am
brought back to a certain memory
surrounding the song. And that
feels good,” he said.
These moments are when
he believes he performs best,
though this doesn’t mean that
his best performances all look
alike. One night he might feel like
“crawling around on the floor or
going into the audience or laying
down,” while another he feels
“very serious and very still, or
severe, and will just sort of stand
still and perform the songs.”
He reassured me that he
doesn’t need to move onstage to
be moved internally. For him, it’s
all about embracing whatever he
may be feeling that particular
evening.
“Maybe they’d prefer it if I put
on a wacky show every night, but
I don’t think it would feel sincere
if I did that, if I wasn’t feeling it,”
he said, after tipping his hand as
some kind of idealist: “I think
that’s what people ultimately
want is” — he pauses here to
laugh at himself — “the truth,
from you, I guess … maybe not all
the time.”
Looking
forward,
Maine
expressed excitement for the next
Blood Orange record, apparently
in the works, as well as the
upcoming Empress Of. He was
also anticipating his own tour,
which began on Feb. 15th, two
weeks after our conversation.
“We’ve been rehearsing a
lot the past two weeks, and it’s
finally gelling in a really special
way, so that feels good and
exciting,” Maine said, though he
won’t romanticize life on tour: “I
am not looking forward to being
away from the people that I love
for like four, five months out
of the year … just trying to stay
centered about it and put on as
good a show as we possibly can,
and have it feel good for everyone
involved, on our side and on the
audience side.”
We can be sure to hear much
of The House, likely several cuts
off of Pool and, if we’re lucky,
one or two from Slow Dance. If
the stars align, we may even get
to hear a cover or two, as Porches
performed The Beatles’s “If I
Fell” for SiriusXMU in mid-Jan.
“I picked that song because it’s
so fucking savage, the line about
like ‘and she will cry when she
learns we are two,’” Maine said,
betraying his more humorous
side. When I ask if he might
play the song on tour, he replies
with a pensive “maybe,” but also
offhandedly
mentions
Alicia
Keys, The Strokes and, most
interestingly, that his manager
has been recommending Drake’s
“Passionfruit.” Covers or not,
though, Maine is a performer
worth lending an ear to — his
unpredictability
and
true
commitment to his art makes
him one of the most exciting acts
in the scene today, both onstage
and off.
Porches’s Aaron Maine on
poetry and songwriting
SEAN LANG
Daily Arts Writer
CONCERT PREVIEW
DOMINO RECORDS
Porches
El Club
Feb. 20, 2018
$15
6A — Monday, February 19, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com