southern records

It's all about maintaining a balance, Mac McCaughan is mostly known as Superchunk's singer/guitarist but he is also easily referred to as the main mind behind Portastatic. That comes naturally by the time you've put out your third full-length release. The Nature of Sap definitely establishes Portastatic as a musical unit which has hit its stride for a long run.

As with all Portastatic music, that album was mostly recorded at Duck Kee Studios, except for the occasional four-track recording thrown in there. What balances The Nature of Sap is the trade-off between instrumental passages and concrete pop songs, leaving the feeling of a full album. Ther is new instrumentation in the mists - piano, clarinet and organ - while the guest musician list continues to grow (this new one has Jonathan Marx of Lambchop, Jerry Kee who has also served as engineer and Matthew McCaughan of the McCaughan family). This record is a little mellower than past efforts, and maybe the music which can be considered Portastatic material is more expansive than before, but Mac's signature touch can never be confused. Songs like "Hurricane Warning" and "Spying On The Spys" carry with them a sensitivity to melody thta only comes with strong musical experience, while the instrumentals "A Lovely Nile" and "The Nature Of Sap" have a compositional integrity which would only be hampered by vocals. Through such a synthesis , Portastatic has emerged as a singular, unique music project.



Droplets by Oskar Kreisel, 1962.