Now Streaming Conrad Plymouth, Conrad Plymouth

Christopher Porterfield’s songs seem explicitly designed not to illicit immediate pleasure. The Milwaukee singer-songwriter, who records under the moniker Conrad Plymouth, favors slow builds over easy climaxes, evocative texture over gut-level hooks, and spooky atmosphere over a quick visceral charge. The four songs on the Conrad Plymouth EP tend to blur together into a 20-minute, mid-tempo, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-sounding groan on first listen, but upon further inspection they reward patient listeners with finely written and sonically constructed coming-of-age meditations. Whether it’s the warm steel guitar that flows in like a salve on the contemplative “Metamora,” or the ghostly organ that haunts “Here To There,” there are lots of little aural details on Conrad Plymouth that stick with you. If the record has a pay-off, it’s the album-closing “Fergus Falls,” a childhood memory that slowly dissolves into a puddle of cacophony.  It’s the big emotional moment on a record that otherwise takes a while to reveal itself.

You can hear Conrad Plymouth here, where it’s available as a “name your price” download.