Before Conrad Plymouth was a five-piece band, it was the alias of just one guy, Christopher Porterfield, a singer-songwriter who probably still gets called “Conrad” on occasion. The band is Porterfield's primary musical outlet these days, but for his latest release, the coyly titled Comrade Plymouth, he returns to the (mostly) solo, acoustic setting of his first recordings. Most of the EP was cut in one take, with a raw, direct-to-tape sound that recalls the cassette-only releases of Damien Jurado's early work (though, since it was released in 2011, not 1996, the EP is a Bandcamp-only release).
“I wanted to put something out to clear out these songs so the band could focus on new material for a full length,” Porterfield says. “A couple of the songs on this thing were Conrad songs that I re-appropriated, because I didn't think they were good enough to justify the time to work them out properly with the band for a full length, but wanted to have versions available since we/I had been playing them out.”
If the EP is a clearinghouse, though, that doesn't mean the material is second-rate. Like Conrad Plymouth's best work, these songs are rich with reoccurring themes of nostalgia and rebirth, and often play out as grand resolutions. Porterfield's gift for spinning small moments into big statements is on clear display.
“The first song is kind of a personal hailing call—no excuses, no regrets,” he explains. “The rest of the songs fit into a narrative that is based on some events in my life from the past year. I wanted to purge that stuff, and document it in front of some good microphones, flaws and all. I did it apart from the full band because it's quite personal, and I wanted to move quickly.”
The fast-and-loose nature of these sessions, Portfield says, provided a healthy balance to the slower pace of recording as a band.
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“I definitely want the band to be a band, and not just dudes backing up a songwriter,” he says. “Being able to do song-dumps like these helps me stay patient with the rest of the band.”
