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Rating: I closed my eyes and let myself be carried away by the calm currents, thinking about what Alexander Supertramp might have told us if only the river hadn't trapped him in the Magic Bus. Yes, I had just discovered "Into The Wild" by Sean Penn, and as an incredible "trick/gift" of fate, so did this album.
Port O'Brien is a project that revolves around the figures of Cambria Goodwin and Van Pierszalowski and the Bay Area north of San Francisco, where Cambria works in a bakery. Van spends the four summer months aboard his father's fishing boat Shawnee, hunting salmon around Kodiak Island in Alaska. Each writes their own music, shaping it from their work, the sea, and in Van's case, the unforgiving and cold climate of the icy lands, music that tells stories with the sweetness of a mother singing fairy tale characters to calm her frightened child and the uncompromising nature of sailors who create hyperboles at the edge of the impossible to share their adventures with us. What emerges is an intense and visceral folk-indie as in "Close The Lid" where the references to the better American youth are almost moving, yet never fall into the banality of the "already heard." Splendid is the icy autobiography of "Fisherman's Son", where Will Oldham and Jason Molina are torn from the infinite American prairies of the central states, brought to the coast, embarked, and left to the fate of the ocean; just as Pavement is completely stripped of their bright clothes and stored in the keel of an abandoned ship aground in "Stuck On A Boat". The ominous portents of Thee Silver Mount Zion & Tra-La-La Band are exorcised in the opening "I Woke Up Today" in an almost tribal and frenetic dance reminiscent also of "Gobbledigook," the opening track of "Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" the latest album by Sigur Ròs, revelations of a boozy grayness are brought to our eyes as in "In Vino Veritas" where Cambria's voice plays on skewed lines that stumble on the mono-tonal melody of guitars mitigated by a bitter and deep melodic aftertaste or narcotic and smoky as in "Alive Or Nothing", where Van seems to want to gift a Modest Mouse track to Pall Jenkins and colleagues. The entire album culminates in "The Rooftop Song", Neil Young of "On The Beach" that comes to embrace the best openings of his grand-nephews Built To Spill, with a sonic finale of rare and tender beauty.
Perhaps this "self-produced" album will never be counted among the masterpieces of American music, but sincerely embodies its soul, heart, and skin perfectly, and I believe that even Christopher Johnson McCandless returning from his journey in Alaska would have stopped to fish with Van Pierszalowski and his father aboard the Shawnee.Tracklist and Videos
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