Chris Portka’s New Project “The Album Everyone Wants” Balances Indie-Folk Warmth and Psychedelic Edge
A ribbon of tape flickers, the band exhales, and Chris Portka has unveiled “The Album Everyone Wants”—a title that winks while the music simply delivers. The U.S. songwriter’s most collaborative statement to date, this full-band set (eleven songs recorded at NYC’s Sear Sound and Oakland’s Brothers [Chinese] Recording) braids indie-folk warmth with indie-rock static, pedal-steel glow with off-kilter psychedelia. Indeed, four new originals anchor the collection while seven reimaginings (Syd Barrett, Skip Spence, George Jones by way of “Tennessee Whiskey,” and more) refract the American songbook through Portka’s calm-steady-beautiful-noise lens. Co-produced and mixed by indie eminence Jasper Leach—with Al Harper, Omar Negrete, Mike “Bonecrusher” Vattuone, Tom “Beardwail” Meagher, Alison Niedbalski, and Kyle Carlson in the orbit—the record feels timeless and slightly left of reality, like a postcard that answers you back.
Sonically, the arrangements privilege touch and timber: acoustic guitars that thrum like heartwood; drum kits recorded with patient air; Mellotron fog curling around pedal-steel silver. Moreover, Portka’s vocal is dry-eyed and companionable, closer to the campfire than the control room, letting lyrics land with earned plain-speech grace. In fact, JJ Golden’s mastering preserves dynamic headroom; crescendos bloom without crushing the grain.
A brisk tour:
Side A
“She Looks So Good Tonight” (written by Portka). Windswept devotion rendered widescreen—Nick Drake tenderness with the faders nudged north; Mellotron and bass cradle a melody that feels discovered rather than written.
“Fun in the Summer” (written by Portka). Heat-haze psychedelia for Highway 101: motorik pulse, glimmering guitars, and a chorus that smells of salt and gasoline.
“It Is Obvious” (written by Syd Barrett). A reverent tilt toward whimsy; angular strums and cupboard-creep lyricism become drowsy carnival, shot through with bar-room telecaster squall.
“Dear Betty Baby” (written by Mayo Thompson). Post-Velvets sea-chanty gone fever dream—organ drones, feedback constellations, and drums that lope like a dinghy in weather.
“Song for Carol” (written by Portka). Pastoral folk prayer, quietly devastating; Mellotron sighs, brushed drums, and a lyric about rebirth that chooses soil over sermon.
Side B
“Poor Moon” (written by Alan Wilson). Environmental elegy recast as lantern-folk; harmonies hover, hi-hat ticks like a Geiger counter for the sky.
“Trucker Speed” (written by Fred Eaglesmith). Road-worn and radio-ready—organ grease, back-seat harmony, and guitars that fishtail without losing the lane.
“Broken Heart” (written by Skip Spence). Spare, spectral, and brave; the band resists adornment so every surreal image rings like tin in an empty room.
“Tennessee Whiskey” (written by Dillon/Hargrove). A sly, kraut-grooved shuffle where pedal steel waltzes with tambourine; moreover, the pocket turns a standard into a slow-motion aurora.
“The Observer” (written by Portka). Existential Americana—Steppenwolf memories, candlelit rooms, and the gentle terror of impermanence; think Browne or Berman, but home-recorded in a house that knows your name.
“Molly” (written by Leach). Night-watch melancholy—sirens down the block, Mellotron halo, and a lyric that dissolves boundaries between skin and smoke.
What makes ”The Album Everyone Wants” unique is its emotional engineering. The sequencing moves like a long walk: curiosity, drift, recognition, return. Pedal steel doesn’t sweeten so much as ventilate; feedback arrives not as bravado but as weather. In Addition, the covers never cosplay: each becomes a Portka song by virtue of pacing, grain, and that subtle tug in the low mids where affection lives. The originals, conversely, feel older than they are—melodically sturdy, narratively unhurried, built for the endurance of memory.
Lyrically, Portka favors images that behave like artifacts—ocean horizons, holiday candles, back-road signage—so meaning accrues the way dust gathers: slowly, honestly. However, sincerity never curdles. A dry humor runs through the record (a krautrock “Whiskey,” a tender apocalypse in “Observer”), reminding us that reverence and play can share a bench. There’s also a tactile romance to the method: tracked in storied rooms, mixed by a co-conspirator who knows where the ghosts live, and released—deliciously—on vinyl only for now. No dopamine drip of playlists; you commit, lower the needle, and let the songs make a meal of your evening. Moreover, the monthly Berkeley sets promise these arrangements can stand without studio scaffolding; the tunes were built to breathe.
By the time the runout groove whispers, you feel companioned rather than dazzled—steadied, even. Portka hasn’t reinvented the wheel; he’s reminded it to roll humanly: sometimes dusty, sometimes diamond, always true. That, paradoxically, is the album everyone actually wants.
The link to purchase the vinyl here:
https://www.seekcollective.com/products/vinyl-the-album-everyone-wants
Enjoyed the read? Consider showing your support by leaving a tip for the writer
TRENDING NOW
CONNECT WITH US
FEATURED
A campfire flickers on the prairie while the city votes to forget—rrunnerrss, the eponymous debut by the Austin-born band rrunnerrss led by award-winning songwriter and composer Michael Zapruder, arrives as both shelter and flare…