Porch Light arrive at their debut album, Hush, after two years on the road, and it shows: they sound far more assured than you’d expect from a first record. The Minneapolis five-piece (Jackie Uhas on vocals, Zac Fogarty and Kyle Siemon on guitars, Henry Hughes on bass and Tony O’Keefe on drums) recorded these eleven tracks at Pachyderm Studios with producer Caleb Wright, following a rapid rise that has taken them from their early EPs to stages at Lollapalooza and Hinterland. Still, nothing about Hush feels rushed.
It certainly doesn’t lack punch. “Arctic” pulls from late-nineties and early-noughties alternative rock: pop punk, emo pop and a touch of post-hardcore aggression, with angular riffs and a rhythm section that recalls Paramore at their sharpest. “Paranoia” slows things down but tightens the tension, the guitars widening as Jackie channels the anxiety through her vocals. “Crossfire”, meanwhile, lands somewhere between that edge and the rhythmic, cutting alt-rock of Metric.
From there, Hush opens up. There are slower alternative ballads, flashes of dream rock and shoegaze, and the odd post-punk edge. “Mary’s Got a Gun” brings out the band’s more melodic side, close to Mannequin Pussy at their most vulnerable. “Living Room Blues” wraps its melodies in dense, reverb-heavy guitars that lean towards the noise pop and shoegaze of Nothing. “With You” pushes that dreamy side even further, starting almost bare before swelling into a huge wave of sound. In between, “Violence” strips everything back to voice and acoustic guitar for barely a minute. The less Porch Light play, the more unsettling it becomes.
The lyrics are what really tie the record together. These are songs about loss, dependence and recovery, but rarely from the point of view of someone who has already made it out the other side. The people in them know they need to leave long before they actually do. “Let me go, I’m holding on too tight”, Jackie sings on “Crossfire”. On “Mary’s Got a Gun”, a crushing “I’ve been done” admits the relationship had been over for some time, even if nobody had said it out loud. “Paranoia” pushes that idea further with “The worst is over / Sending me into paranoia”: the danger has passed, but the body is still stuck in survival mode.
That tension between knowing what needs to happen and actually doing it runs through the whole album. On “With You”, “running circles on a straight line” says it perfectly: the way out is there, but getting to it is another matter. “Shut Out” turns that same conflict inward, trying to block out feelings that refuse to disappear. It isn’t until “Baggage”, the closing track, that anyone finally moves: “I’m moving upstate”. After so many songs spent waiting, doubting and holding on, someone finally packs up and leaves.
Hush is much more than a set of strong guitar songs. It’s a mature, solid debut with real range, able to sound fierce, dreamy or exposed without losing its identity. And in Jackie Uhas, Porch Light have a singer who knows exactly when not to push. That restraint is what makes the moments when she finally lets go hit so much harder.
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