Send "Port O'Brien " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pastemagazine |
 Port O’Brien’s second studio album sounds just fine coming out of computer speakers or iPod headphones, but the best way to appreciate these darkly ambient, heartily ramshackle indie-folk songs is around a campfire. Working with Earlimart’s Aaron Espinoza, the band stitch together threads of hearty Pacific Northwest indie, West Coast rock, and rustic creak-folk to create a loose, at times uneasy intimacy that allows for murky ambience as well as raucous sing-alongs.Van Pierszalowski still strains earnestly, adding gravity to “Oslo Campfire” and “Sour Milk/Salt Water,” but it’s Cambria Goodwin—a greater presence here than on previous outings—sews the most intriguing patterns on “Tree Bones” and “High Without Hope 3,” her spectral vocals at times barely discernible but commanding in their otherworldliness. Again addressing themes of geographical and emotional isolation, Threadbare sounds like a band trying to find its place in the world, whether on land or at sea....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| Deep into the promotional cycle for All We Could Do Was Sing last summer, Port O’Brien played a show in East London with the similarly buzzed-about Dodos. I stumbled in only to catch the closing minutes of their set, as Van Pierszalowski stalked the stage in wild-eyed manner, gleefully inciting the crowd to scream along with him. threadbare finds the band deftly change tack, substituting said bravado for dreamy, bereavement-informed reverie. The results are as fascinating as they are occasionally uneven, on a record that warms and chills with profoundly magnanimous intent. It’s Cambria Goodwin rather than Pierszalowski who steers this ship, her ethereal vocal turns drifting in and out of comprehension with simple, affecting grace. She lost her younger brother during the formative stages of the album’s development, a tragic occurrence that impacted deeply on what followed. Yet threadbare isn’t an overtly somber work; even as it negotiates its most melancholic waters, it shimmers with an odd sense of hope and liberation. The latest incarnation of ‘Tree Bones’ is a case in point: a loose acoustic strum that snaps into purposeful life somewhere around its mid-point, Pierszalowski’s distinctive pipes propping up Goodwin’s as the instrumentation circles and swells ever more expansively around them. It’s a beautiful contemplation of natural cycles, life, death and ensuing grief, its strings eventually ceding so that only Goodwin’s brittle vocal and a barely audible guitar line remain....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| 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....full text |
Port O'Brien lyrics
|
| |||||||
