Porches provide much-needed reprieve at Bimbo’s

Holy shit did I need this.

After experiencing what can only be generously called a torturous, ruinous, miserable shit-of-a-day watching our country elect a fascist asshole for president, it was safe to say I wasn’t exactly feeling in fighting form on Wednesday night. I felt listless, distraught and generally unmotivated—the couch looked like a good place to park myself for the next four years (if a hermetic cabin in the woods couldn’t be secured.)

Eventually, I decided to get my ass up, because I had tickets to see Porches at Bimbo’s 365 Club. I was thinking that a live music environment filled with like-minded positivity would do me some damn good.

Hooboy, was that the right call.

The creative brainchild of songwriter Aaron Maine, Porches is currently touring behind their stellar 2024 album, “Shirt.” That record—one of the year’s best—represents the latest step in the Porches' evolution, a movement which started as icy, minimalist synth pop but has steadily grown into blown-out rock music that almost borders on grunge.

That full-throated approach was on display at Bimbo’s on Wednesday. Porches—which tours as a tight four piece act—blasted through a series of cuts from “Shirt” to start the show, with all renderings delivered at max volume levels.

Starting with “Rag,” a downhill, dirty punk ditty that recalls “Bleach” era Nirvana, and moving through album highlights like “Bread Believer” and “Itch,” Maine and company offered unapologetically loud forms of relief for the audience, all of whom seemed desperate to scream their lungs out. 

After plowing through most of the songs on the new album, the band detoured for a compelling performance of “rangerover,” a standout track from the 2020 release, “Ricky Music.” Following that, the group closed their opening set with a stirring rendition of “Music,” the closing track on “Shirt” and a paean to the wondrously self-destructive idolatry of rock ‘n’ roll.

For the encore, the band launched into “Sally” at the behest of some fans in the crowd, turning the track into a raucous number that resulted in the first mosh pit of the night. It was the track’s tour debut, leaving Maine to surmise that he “wished we played that song for the first 20 fucking shows of this tour.”

The band then segued into their 2016 classic “Car,” before closing the night with an uproarious version of “Country,” the quiet, hushed ballad from 2018’s album, “The House” that was transformed into a glorious group singalong.

During the performance, Maine mostly shied away from stage banter, eschewing platitudes about healing and coming together in a time of need, which would have felt forced (and hopeless) anyway at this point. He did say that Bimbo’s was his “favorite place he’s ever played,” and randomly blurted out “sex” a few times into the microphone—ostensible non-sequiturs that still felt more cathartic than any meaningless political declarations.

It will be a long four years. Seeing live music will not solve the country’s myriad problems, but it will make the time pass quicker, if only for a night at a time.