New York indie-pop act Porches headed to the Belly Up

While the singer-songwriter Aaron Maine, otherwise known as his moniker Porches, is currently sitting in his Chinatown apartment, his mind is on his upcoming tour, which includes a stop at Solana Beach’s Belly Up on Tuesday, March 31.

“We’ve played in San Diego once before a few years ago,” he says recalling a performance at The Observatory North Park. “I think at that point we were just ripping through dates between Los Angeles and Phoenix, but didn’t get a chance to spend a lot of time in the city. Maybe this time we will, because I remember liking the area!”

Maine has come a long way from his formative years in the quaint upstate New York town of Pleasantville to his current status as an inventive indie pop wordsmith with an ear for hooks and melodies. Initially an indie rock project, Porches has since shifted into hook-filled synth-pop with an experimental slant. It’s these qualities that are on full display in his new album Ricky’s Music, which came out earlier this month.

“The album is about my experiences, no matter how dramatic, trivial, mundane, heartbreaking, or beautiful,” he says of his fourth album, the follow up to 2018’s The House. “On Ricky’s Music, there’s a song on the album about riding a scooter to the mall, and there’s also a song about jumping off a bridge. It’s hard to say one thing inspired the album, because it’s really about two years of my life and what I’ve experienced.”

With such an array of influences, from the maudlin to the emotional, if everything inspires him how does Maine know what to write about? “Choosing is a natural intuition of the thing,” Maine says, noting he’s constantly writing. “I try to let it all come out no matter how silly it may seem at the time or in the future. There’s never been an outline that I made for myself.”

With that said, Maine says he doesn’t usually plan out how he’ll perform the songs he’ll concoct live, preferring to figure it out along the way. “That’s part of the fun,” he points out, noting he’ll bring two musicians out with him on tour. “That’s always been a part of the Porches experience. The life show is not an entirely different thing, but it has an anything goes attitude. The beauty of playing for other people live is that you can do whatever you want. I think it’s exciting as long as you can offer a fresh take on a song.”

With that said, Maine said he’s especially looking forward to lift the tracks from Ricky’s Music from mere recordings and bring them to life on his national tour, including that Belly Up appearance. “This is the album that I’ve been most excited to share as an artist so far,” he says. “It really is my best work.”

For more information, visit porchesmusic.com. Porches’ show at the Belly Up starts at 8 p.m., doors open at 7 p.m. Visit bellyup.com.