LISTEN: Jody Porter Shares New Single “Light Up The Sky”

Jody Porter, the ever-mercurial Fountains of Wayne guitarist and self-described “shoegaze pioneer” (he’s right, you know), has hipped the Rock & Roll Globe to the upcoming release of his latest music. 

EP II, the more-or-less logically titled sequel to EP 1, will be self-released on February 10th, and will feature five new songs – including the coruscating “Light Up the Sky”, which we’re exclusively premiering here.

It’s a gorgeous, anthemic slow-build of a song, built around alluring, repeated minor-key cadences, and more optimistic and emotional than is typical for perpetually cool Porter: “you light the way… light up the sky.”

“It’s a collection of songs [that] are old, new, borrowed and blue,” Porter explains. “But there’s no blues.”

As with EP 1, the new one includes recordings begun nearer to the turn of millennium with Strokes producer Gordon Raphael.

“I have no idea why I never put [this stuff] out,” he proclaims. If the new song is any indication, EP II will feature layer after layer of squalling, cosmic guitars, buoyed by Porter’s surefire tune sense and insouciant vocals. Another EP is in the works, and he may compile the trio into a full-length.

Porter came to prominence in the early ‘90s working with his band the Belltower in London. Though it was the locus of his early efforts pursuing a more atmospheric, psychedelia-inflected style, Porter’s come a long way from that first group. (Though he’s retained a King’s Road if not Carnaby Street sartorial sense from his days abroad, and exhibits other symptoms of the Anglophilia so many power-poppers carry terminally). He met multi-instrumentalist wunderkind Adam Schlesinger just as the Belltower was winding down, roping him into the band before he found himself in Adam’s more enticing new project.

Soon, Fountains of Wayne was born, leaving behind five classic albums, which document the production and arrangement symbiosis between Porter and Schlesinger just as they do the songwriting harmony between Schlesinger and lead singer Chris Collingwood, whom Porter hopes to work with again soon. In addition to the EP’s, he’s put out the albums Close to the Sun, Month of Mondays, and Pacifier – as well as Waterways, his proudest effort (“my COVID record”, he’s called it), which heretofore has only been available as a CD or LP. He says he’s been working to get the record on Spotify, careful to ensure the sound quality translates – “crossfade stuff” and similar details that for Porter make all the difference.

Porter is a playfully cryptic interview – he and I had a freewheeling chat last year for this site. He’s laconic when he isn’t garrulous – when I ask him who the powerful voice that comes in at the end of his new track is, he tells me, “oh, that’s my friend Kelly from Pennsylvania,” and leaves it at that. But he stands by the line he laid on me when discussing his body of solo work: “it is what it is.”

Though he cautions, “I think you’re supposed to say it in a female Italian accent.” Make of that what you will.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Ryan Maffei

Ryan Maffei is a freelance writer, musician and actor in the Dallas area. He was a member of the lost punk group Hot Lil Hands and the lost pop group the Pozniaks. He loves the Go-Betweens and was lucky enough to write liner notes for their box sets.

Latest posts by Ryan Maffei (see all)

• When Johnny Comes Marching Home: Rock ‘n’ Roll at 50 - February 20, 2025
• Year of the Girlypops or Charli/Chappell ’24 - December 12, 2024
• My Vanished Friend: Remembering Martin Phillipps of The Chills - July 28, 2024