While it’s probably easier to sell out shows when you’re touring with big names like Yuck, M83, Smith Westerns, Beach House, and Youth Lagoon, which Porcelain Raft has done (all in the last year mind you), there’s something to say for a musician that can make (multiple) connections of such caliber, and hit the road so often. The Italian born 37-year-old Mauro Remiddi has been making music for sometime now, and while he’s only played a short while under the Porcelain Raft moniker, he’s wasted no time making records, releasing three EPs since 2010’s Curve EP, and finally getting signed by Secretly Canadian to release his first full-length Strange Weekend, in January of this year. 

In describing Porcelain Raft’s sound, there have been the usual shoegaze and dream-pop allusions, but the most intriguing might be the branding of Remiddi’s music as bedroom-pop, which is primarily defined by lo-fi vocals spiked with dreamy, white-washed guitars or synths all boiled in a steeping pot of melancholia, i.e. more hyphenated jargon conjured up by critics. Recently on his blog, Remiddi spoke to these common descriptions as he reflected on a book he was reading called, The Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Remiddi said, “All these talks of bedroom pop for example, of melancholia associated sometimes to my music it always felt wrong or [at least] inaccurate to me, but I’m interested in what people see when they see music...The idea of [a] bedroom becomes the idea of a safe shelter where we are allowed to isolate our self from the outside storm (big cities sound like a storm at times)...It’s a big step to open the door of our room and let people see what’s going on inside. A dreamer with no sense of reality would never do that, a dreamer needs to sleep in order to keep his dreams vivid.” In entertaining the consideration of bedroom-pop, it’s an important paradox to consider, that Remiddi, being a brilliant dreamer-pilgrim in need of sleep, we would open our door to him, for him to take refuge from the storm and for us to take refuge in his music, which was The Ninth Ward last night: our collective safe shelter. 

I have to give so much credit to Brother Keep and Canary Girls, who both did an exemplary job as openers. After most of the people trickled in, Brother Keep came out and played a handful of songs that just made me flat out happy. I don’t know how else to put it. The five-piece carried a youthful semblance, taking to their songs with unabashed precision, and I’m pretty sure a large percentage of the audience that night was made up of their nuclear family and close friends. It felt out of place at first, almost like you were 14 years old again at a friend’s youth group you were invited to, and that’s not meant to be an insult in anyway. It felt familial and pure. Brother Keep were sharing unadulterated airs and it kicked ass. 

Next, Canary Girls came out and let their 80s vibes fill the place, as they do. It was my second time seeing the group, and it is rather impressive to see how their style of live performance has really come into its own. Lead singer, Bill Eager’s melodies are full and float effortlessly over keys and electronic drums, like a dense fog moves across the mountain tops. Their sound is so resilient, effortlessly so. One minute you’re dancing your shoes off to “Everything Is Changing” and the next you’re swaying gently in contemplation to “Night Court”. It was a fantastic opening set. 

Before you knew it Remiddi and his accompanied drummer, Michael Wallace, were setting up their apparatus, and everyone was all set to go. Before they began, I looked around the dimly lit, stonewalled room and noticed that there were less people at the venue than we had started out with. That was a first. Remiddi threw on his electric guitar and Wallace borrowed a small drink table from a obliged group of people to put his laptop on so that his mother, who he had Skyped back home, could watch him play the show. That was familiar. And awesome. He jokingly told the audience to say “Hi” and turned the computer to the crowd for a brief second. We all laughed and waved and so did Remiddi. It wasn’t awkward.

Without talking they went right into the first track from Strange Weekend, which they played a lot from during the night. “Drifting In And Out” starts with a blissed-out pulse and creeps into a full on dream-pop heartbeat, with Remiddi singing (a cross between Bowie and Lennon) “Take me away, directionless / It doesn’t have to make any sense”. This first line could have been the body of an affidavit that we all agreed to and signed at the beginning of the show. Next, they plunged into “Shapeless and Gone”, a steady guitar-strummed song with sonic splatters of echoed drum samples. Remiddi croons, “It’s so good to know you’re out there...And I feel shapeless and gone / So close to nothing.” Lyrics like these are so much more prominent as they bounce between the walls of The Ninth Ward. Everything Porcelain Raft was doing, every trill, every buzz, every kick or strum or roll was another step into the storm clouds, at any moment lightening could strike. And as it did Wallace was bowed over his drums as he ended the song in sporadic fashion, slowing the tempo drastically with each measure as we waited for the best case of the hiccups we ever had dissipate. 

On the next track Wallace came in striking an electronic drum pad, which was sent ricocheting across the room, sleigh bells in the other hand, dangling them against the cymbal with no rhyme or reason, just euphoria. The third track off Strange Weekend was so well-defined as a live song. It was so purposeful in the way it hypnotized every blue-lit face in the small crowd, as Remiddi joined in with pulsating guitar strumming and synth. He asks the obvious question, “Is It Too Deep For You?”. Which then begs the obvious answer, “Yes”. 

Toward the middle of the set, they played a few songs from their catalog of EPs, and the previously unreleased B-side, “Something In Between”, which they had on sale as a 7” after the performance. As the next song was about to start, Remiddi looked to the crowd and kindly asked everyone to move to the stage since we were all so sparse as people were standing at the far ends of the basement, a void of 5 or 6 feet creating a moat of cement around the stage. We willingly drew to the little platform, close enough to reach out and touch the musicians. They fittingly went into a slower song, the gorgeous “Picture”, where the beauty in Remiddi’s vocals seriously stand out. And before you knew it they were announcing their last song, just as soon as they had captivated everyone in the room. As Remiddi tapped his keyboard to make sure it was ready, a pulse of organ flickered through the room, and I knew they were ending the night with, “Unless You Speak From The Heart”, a favorite of mine. The song was energetic and fast-paced, with Wallace huddled again over his drum kit, striking powerfully on the snare in deep concentration. Remiddi trilled a most intimidating lyric: “And I don’t want to listen, unless you speak from your heart.” There was no encore because nobody knew what to do, we didn’t know where our hearts were, let alone how to speak from them properly. My mind was aglaze. I walked to the merch table and bought that 7”. 

Remiddi was at the table and I asked him how he got the courage to move to London from Rome. He told me he had moved there when he was young; that it was a scary thing to do. He was smiling. He sarcastically recommended I stay put, “Don’t leave! Stay here and be safe and enjoy life!” I laughed, but thought about the dangers of staying locked in one place. Porcelain Raft’s music is like the dreams of a man that never sleeps. He is constantly moving, finding new territory, probing the strange things in life that are hard to make out, and finding that there is nothing to hold back from. I slept soundly that night, and dreampt of nothing. It wasn’t until the next morning that I re-read the lyrics from the last track on Strange Weekend, entitled “The Way In”. It made the previous night that much more special.

"THE WAY IN"

ADVISING PEOPLE NOT TO TRAVEL FAR

IS THAT FOR REAL? OH BABY LISTEN NOW
YOU MAY HAVE HURT ME ALL THIS TIME AND YET I’M HERE TONIGHT

AND IF I FEEL SOMETHING FOR YOU KNOW, IT’S ALL IN MY BRAIN, IT WILL GO AWAY SOMEHOW
I WISH NOTHING MORE THEN WHAT I HAVE
I HOPE YOU COULD SAY THE SAME

AND I KNOW THAT YOU TALK TO YOURSELF AT NIGHT
DO YOU FEEL BETTER DO YOU FEEL RIGHT
THERE’S NO NEED TO PLAY GAMES TONIGHT…

THIS IS NOT A DREAM
THIS IS FOR REAL
BRING WHAT YOU HAVE INSIDE, OUT IN THE LIGHT.

THEN SHE SAID THAT SHE HAD ENOUGH
I’M LOOKING AT YOU OH BABY LISTEN NOW
I MAY NEED TO GO OUTSIDE, THE AIR FEELS SO FRESH TONIGHT

AND IT’S THE END OF SUMMER CAN YOU FEEL IT NOW
THE WORLD IS SPINNING FASTER SOMEHOW
THERE ARE THINGS THAT CAN NEVER BE SAID ALOUD