Port O'Brien first snagged some online buzz several years ago with "I Woke Up Today", a loose, rickety, communal sing-along that played out like the progeny of California's new folkies and Arcade Fire's euphorics. One collection of EPs and two full albums later (and newly signed to TBD Records), the band has pretty much stayed the course, adding some orchestral flourishes to a few songs on new LP Threadbare, but generally hewing to its acoustic guitar/secular spiritual awakening formula.
That steadiness includes recycling older songs like jangly Celtic jig-like "Tree Bones", which has now appeared on three different Port O'Brien releases. Like half of Threadbare's tracks (most of them produced by Earlimart's Aaron Espinoza), including "Oslo Campfire" and "Leap Year", "Tree Bones" winds its way to a rousing refrain that lyrically and musically promotes an optimistic combo of self reliance and a little help from your friends. If that sounds facile, it actually isn't. And if Port O'Brien's general vibe isn't as au courant in 2009 as it was in 2006, the band has firmly established the group-hug aesthetic as their own and proven that they're no trend chasers.
"Band" is a bit of a misnomer, though. At Port O'Brien's core are part-time musicians Van Pierszalowski and Cambria Goodwin, who work every summer in Alaska-- he on his dad's commercial salmon fishing boat and she as a baker in little Larsen Bay's only cannery. Unlike say, the Decemberists, Port O'Brien earn their seafaring references the old-fashioned way, and the constant stream of swells and salt water never come across as affected grabs at working-class or folk-tradition authenticity. The duo live the remainder of the year in Northern California and add temporary band members as needed for recording and touring. They recruited Papercuts' Jason Quever-- increasingly the Bay Area's go-to guy for touring, session work, and engineering-- to produce approximately half of Threadbare. Quever typically wraps his own bedroom pop in muffled melancholy, and his cabin-fevered touch is suited to the record's more emotionally nuanced, Goodwin-sung numbers, like the bookend variations of "High Without the Hope", and the dirgey "(((Darkness Visible)))". Goodwin's brother died just as Port O'Brien were starting to work on the album, and while death doesn't overwhelm the record, it's a constant presence, sitting quietly in the corner and informing Goodwin's sweet but weary voice.
But these guys just aren't the types to dwell on any kind of downer. The warm, punchy "Love Me Through", sequenced immediately after "Darkness", announces, "Now it's time for healing." And on the record's best earworm, "Sour Milk/Salt Water", a relatively big-sounding production of digital manipulation and swollen multi-tracked vocals, Pierszalowski sings, "I don't have a trust fund/ If the luck don't come/ It could be a cold one/ All through the winter," with a characteristically blasé shrug. If you're sick of hearing privileged kids whine about their non-problems (or celebrate their privilege), Threadbare's a breath of fresh, sea air.
