Are Port O’ Brien a real band? Their back-story, the sound and their subject matter hint at some sinister contrivance of the North American indie aristocracy. Perhaps chatting backstage at Coachella Isaac Brock turned to Colin Meloy and said “You know what’s great? When we write songs about the sea. The fans dig that”. Win Butler, walking by, heard the conversation and added “Sure, that’s cool. But you know what’s cooler? Mass singalongs.” Conor Oberst, returning from the water-cooler chimed in “Naw naw, superfluous string sections have worked wonders for me”, and the Shins began to wax lyrical about their song structures being the key to their success. A few hours later, having taken too kindly to the complimentary drinks stand and having spent far too long in the California sun, they began to hatch an evil plan. They would create a band of their own, make up some bullshitty back-story about the band working in a salmon cannery, and create a gargantuan indie sensation.
Whoever actually did hatch the idea of Port O’ Brien is a genius. Quintessentially American and as indie as Neutral Milk Hotel knitted jumpers, their sound sews together the materials mentioned above into their own nevertheless distinctive patchwork quilt. The much blogged-about lead single I Woke Up Today bears resemblance to Arcade Fire’s Wake Up in more than just name. A desperately melodic shoutalong, it’ll come as no surprise if U2 decide to use it as their entrance song the next time they need to claw at indie credentials. Elsewhere, The Rooftop Song’s climactic guitar ramshackleness is so irrepressible it’s a wonder a recording studio could physically contain it. Given that the sea constitutes a great proportion of his life, lead singer Van Pierszalowski clearly has a taste for the extreme, the tumultuous and the colossal. It is the counterweight of his co-songwriter Cambria Goodwin, who works as a baker in a tiny town on the coast, that lends this their first proper album a sort of humble (twee?) credence. Her dainty vocals on In Vino Veritas make the song a sweet break from the chiefly Pierszalowski-led album, indicating Port O’ Brien have depths yet to be properly explored.
Sadly, it is from a lack of depth that this nautically-themed album suffers primarily. There just aren’t enough ideas bouncing around to continually reward a listener used to discovering a new layer of instrumentation on every listen to Funeral or Castaways and Cutouts. It is, nevertheless, a promising salvo from a band destined to leave their small-town life behind. The question remains whether they’ll be quite as compelling without their jobs canning salmon and baking gingerbread men.
