Portastatic
The Perfect Little Door
Merge
I know that there are people out there who enjoy this sort of thing… there has to be. I figured I might enjoy it; Merge usually puts out some pretty solid indie pop stuff. Portastatic, however, is not my cup of tea.
Interestingly enough, Steve Albini recorded this EP for the band, so I was expecting some loud drums, ringing bass, and buzzsaw guitars. Sadly, none of this was the case. The band must be friends with him, because this is the softest sounding stuff he’s done since the last Dirty Three record.
The Perfect Little Door is a fairly long album, with songs wandering in and out of consciousness, with half sung/ half-mumbled vocals. The music is distant and disinterested… it was very hard to make it thorough this record. A random distorted guitar sneaks into the picture every once in a while, but the majority of the material here is subdued and fairly pretentious.
I know that I’m probably committing some type of indie-rock blasphemy by saying this record is anything short of fantastic, but it’s just really boring. I’m not sure where the fascination with this band comes from.
