The Summer of the "Porchetta Summer Demo" – Interview with Porchetta

“Sun never kissed me”: a line that already contains an entire biography. And somehow, it feels entirely appropriate to publish this sort of interview (though it's more a cheeky love letter) on the last day of summer. Especially since, until a few weeks ago, I knew absolutely nothing about this band. I couldn't find much about them online, they had a rather weird name, and yet, after less than a minute of listening at excessive volume (an experience I stumbled upon completely by chance) they had already won me over.

They're called Porchetta, they're from New York, and they claim to play “shitgaze,” a genre I thought had disappeared Internet ages ago. Apparently not. Their new Porchetta Summer Demo EP scraped, scratched and generally abused my car stereo speakers throughout the last weeks of this summer. 

Lightning-fast guitars somewhere between Dinosaur Jr., Wavves and Cloud Nothings, infectious tu-tu-tu-ru-tu choruses, and a glorious mess of noise and reverbs.

At a certain point, I thought it was NECESSARY to send them at least a message. To tell them that the sound was amazing, that I couldn't wait to start doing the radio show again so I could play these songs, but also that I wanted to know more. And, perhaps more importantly, that I wanted YOU to know more. Probably more than you would have wanted to know.

So I wrote, and George Gildersleeve replied.

Please, tell me more about these songs! Where did the Porchetta Summer Demo EP come from? 

Basically, I wrote these songs over the course of 2 to 3 months this year, at the end of spring / beginning of summer. Before this I was spending most of my time working on Gils, my electro pop project but I wanted to pick up my guitar again.

Coincidentally my cousin Greg was working on his “shitgaze drum kit” in his basement at the time. I’d send him the tracks and he’d then record drums over them. It was a very backwards funny way to record but hey, we made it happen ahah.

What were the main influences behind your music?

Growing up I mostly listened to bands like My Bloody Valentine, and fell mostly in love with their early recordings, such as The New Record by My Bloody Valentine (1986), Sunny Sundae Smile (1987), You Made Me Realize (1988) and Ecstasy and Wine (1989). These records always stood out to me, they sound very raw, there’s not a lot of reverb, similar to the Jesus and Mary Chain. We are also very into the early C86 scene. Other influences would be acts like I Love You Airlines, The Pastels, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Times New Viking, to name a few. Another band that we love the swedish The Legends. Their song Always The Same really got that static guitar sound with dream pop vocals that we love.

Tell me a little about the history of the band, and how it did come together.

Gregory (northernquahog) is my cousin and we grew up listening to our uncles radio station every week (WUSB FM Stony Brook). He played really good indie! That’s what got us into all this.

Greg and I played in multiple other bands together: many different styles, crust punk, electro punk, indie dance. We love this stuff! When we decided to start a new project together, we always wanted to have a girl singer in the band, and this is why I got Claire to sing on the songs with me in Porchetta. We work together at a restaurant in Queens. She has never really sang before but I told her just give it what you got! And it came out perfect! We love an organic sound: to us, it doesn’t have to be technically flawless to be great.

The name Porchetta obviously has a story behind it. Where does it come from?

All three of us are half Italian. So our families taught us how to cook, in particular my Uncle Bill. Growing up, Uncle Bill would make a porchetta every summer when we went camping at Cedar Point, in Easthampton. It was the main event of our camping trip. Everyone (even the campground employees!) would come to our campsite to have a bite of this delicious porchetta in the woods. Fast forward a few years, Uncle Bill unexpectedly passed away. He was very very important to us, the life of the party, the guy that made everyone smile.

Now, I live in my own apartment in Brooklyn (we grew up on Long Island). As I was writing the album, every Tuesday I would wake up and cook a porchetta in my backyard. It perfectly set the vibe for writing the songs! The smells, the excitement, and the slow cook! Then my friends would come over for dinner and I would show them what I wrote and got their feedback. There is nothing like a warm summer night with a perfectly cooked porchetta and indie music, hahah!