Port O'Brien - 'All We Could Do Was Sing' (City Slang) Released 04/08/08

‘All We Could Do Was Sing’ is a title perhaps not as melodramatic and smug as it may seem.  For Port O’ Brien, the statement is less a shuffling, thumb-twiddling apology than a statement of fact.  With chief singer-songwriter Van Pierszalowski stuck in the desolate isolation of his family fishing business in Kodiak Island, Alaska, every summer; song-craft has served equally as creative escape and bitter, epistolary outlet.

“I don’t know why I’m here,/was I just born this way,/or have I just learnt to accept it,” he yearns on ‘Fisherman’s Son’; setting the tone for the album’s thread of quiet conflict.  As the choppy seas mirror the bubbling inner turmoil, songs wrestle within themselves in idiosyncratic guitar tumbles and vocal crashes. Laments for a life of normality, such as on the bristling ‘Valdez’; and a sense of tortured ennui jostle together in the record’s ramshackle shufflings and building, soaring crescendos. 

However, even through the low-fi malevolence of ‘Stuck on a Boat’, the ice-capped weight of the wilderness surroundings is a constant, delicate backdrop.  Where Port O’Brien seem to have found their wryly playful, yet somewhat weather-beaten niche is in the salty brackish margins where ethereal meets scribbled, diary-entry truth.  They simultaneously capture the otherworldly charm of the Arcade Fire in their shimmering choruses; and gritty realism through the heartfelt vocals and rippling, anguished lyrics.

Imagery of fishing, landscapes and the sea take on a glittering edge: where other bands fail to elevate the terms ‘nautical’ and ‘twee’ above associations with Topshop ranges of Agyness Dean’s bizarre new bowl-cut, Port O’ Brien manage effortlessly.  The art-pop narrative owes a great deal to American indie; evoking Modest Mouse and Broken Social Scene in the loud-quiet-loud temper tantrums; but songs like the sublime, rousing opener ‘I Woke Up Today’ could just as easily be performed by Mystery Jets in sou’westers. 

‘In Vino Veritas’ is a lilting, dusk-light campfire sing song; while ‘My Eyes Won’t Shut’ is an upbeat, whimsical folksy offering that opens and shuts like a dusty storybook.  ‘All We Could Do Was Sing’ bristles in the electric air that hums between the calm and storm: the band capture a low-key yet exhilarating tension in shaky rhythms and melancholic strings.  They may be physically out at sea, but this album proves that musically, they’re anything but.