STACK #159 Jan 2018

MUSIC

NEWS

PORCHES Aaron Maine is Porches, and Porches is a revelation for those into enigmatic synth-pop. Maine answered our questions about his new album The House ; be sure to read the full interview online.

harmonies/counter melodies recently. I think this is executed most successfully when it’s fluid and I’m not thinking about music theory. Like sometimes you can sort of see the notes and how they relate to each other, almost like a math problem or a drawing or something, moving up and down and around, landing together, or sometimes even a half step away creating all sorts of interesting relationships. Who are we hearing on Åkeren ? Her last word is “Julie” (soft J) – and you are wearing a necklace with the same name on in the Find Me clip.Who is Julie? That is Kaya Wilkins, AKA Okay Kaya, performing Åkeren . It’s a poem I wrote about Ricky and Julie, which she recites in Norwegian, her native language. The last word is “Julie”, who is a character that appears on the last song of the album as well. Ricky and Julie are two people I imagined. I had this thought of them getting together upstate like in the country where they would take turns telling each other exactly what they would like to hear someone say to them, and then the other would say whatever it was the other wanted to hear said. Sort of acting out each other’s fantasy vibes, some ideal relationship, some unattainable connection, I’m not sure. Of course the necklace was a nod to that, I’m glad that you picked up on it :) ZKR

favourite bits of art. Did it emerge thematically as a way for you to collect some maybe disparate things into one place, and from there become the album’s title? Well I suppose the goings on in my life at the time of writing this record were a bit disparate, but the house basically stands for the apartment I was living in at the time. It was central to everything, while the rest of my life was a bit scattered. It was a place so charged up, I would collect my thoughts there, I feel like the furniture smelled like my moods, like

Read the full interview online at stack.com.au

everything I was feeling stained the walls, the air was always thick. It was quite comfortable yet also quite claustrophobic. It represented safety, comfort, warmth, love and also acted as a sort of mirror for my discontent – a container, a trap, a debt.

The House by Porches is out January 19 via Domino.

It sounds like there’s still a lot of mystery – clues even you haven’t yet deciphered – going on with the themes/ motivations of this record. Do you expect to ever unravel all its meanings? I’ve been thinking about how when I write my best songs I almost black out. It's some sort of tapping into the subconscious where you don’t question what it is you are writing about. It could be a line or sentence or phrase that makes no sense grammatically or literally, but something will just feel right about it, you just want to believe in it. I think these are the clues that you leave yourself behind

to decipher years after an album or song is released and therefore “finished”. I often find it

hard to talk about the meaning of a song, which I’ve been doing a lot with these interviews recently, because although the album is already about a year old for me, having finished mixing it this past February, I still don’t have a great perspective on where half of it came from. I think the meanings sometimes can never be fully unravelled, even by the author, and that’s exciting to me. A house or hotel as a symbol for a collective is something that occurs in some of my

Your harmonies are beautifully unusual. How much time do you spend looking for something that isn’t an obvious third above your melody – or are harmonies a much more fluid creation than this, like you don’t even necessarily think of one of the notes as being primary? I appreciate this. I do love a major third with all my heart. That harmony sort of scratched the itch for years, but I’ve become more interested in exploring other

CELTIC WOMAN

TOURING 07/02 - 16/02

M áiréad Carlin, Susan McFadden, Éabha McMahon and Tara McNeill comprise Celtic Woman – the all-female group who have brought the gorgeous sounds of Ireland to the world by way of their incredible vocal performances.

In January the four-piece are releasing two titles in time for their Australian tour (Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth): the CD Voices Of Angels and the DVD Homecoming: Live From Ireland . Voices Of Angels is the 11th LP from the band, but marks the first time they've recorded with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland; it includes audience favourites ( Amazing Grace , Ave Maria ) as well as traditional Irish classics ( Mo Ghile Mear, Teir Abhaile Riu ). The DVD proffers a full-length experience of the band's September 2017 show, recorded live at at Dublin's 3Arena. ZKR

Voices Of Angels and Homecoming: Live From Ireland by Celtic Woman are out January 12 via Universal.

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