Since establishing
Porches
in the early 2010s,
Aaron Maine
has taken the project through stylistic shifts including angsty indie rock, sleek, synth pop-leaning indie electronica, and ('90s childhood influences) pop-punk and grunge, while allowing elements from limited other styles to seep in. Tying his output all together is the distressed, melancholy demeanor of the self-loathing. This overriding clouded mood and tendency toward sound evolution continue on his sixth full-length, simply titled
Shirt
. The fact that it's his loudest, most volatile album yet was due in large part to his moving his recording equipment out of his New York apartment and into a dedicated space for the first time. With the suggestion of metal even peering through from time to time, it's also his most consistently grunge-centric material to date. As usual, though,
Maine
makes the sound his own, not only with his distinctively weary and wary baritone vocals but with production touches: here, those include a (occasionally blown-out) low end moved to the front of the mix with vocals, a spacious design that invites eruptions, and the sometimes-furtive distortion of vocals through mechanical pitch correction (in
's case, an artistic choice). As for subject matter, the songwriter described
as a mix of biography and fantasy but one inspired by the huge contrast between childhood innocence and the reality of adulthood in the modern world. The set list begins with a few seconds of warbled, glitchy effects on "Return of the Goat," as if to foreshadow
's consistently eerie, out-of-balance feel. The next song, "Sally," instead opens with a guitar riff worthy of 1990 Seattle, although
maintains a level of intimacy rarely heard on the grunge scene, even when the song's chorus explodes with feedback, churning guitar distortion, and crashing cymbals (in between verses underscored by bass and stick clicks). Album highlight "Rag" is at least as incendiary as well as catchy, with drops, shouty starts, and stops making it even more unstable. That song is like a microcosm of the album, which goes by in a series of short bursts, with its 12 songs all fitting in the space of less than half an hour. After tracks with titles like "Crying at the End," "USA," and "Voices in My Head" (which finds
affecting singing voices), the album -- bound to be a tour favorite -- ends on the disarming piano-based ballad "Music," a bittersweet tribute to the art form and his addiction to it: "I love to feel the highs/And love to feel the lows/I love it when the music takes control." ~ Marcy Donelson