"It takes us away from where we are/ Oh, what a machine!"
Lyrics: Genius
In "Car", the third single from American synthpop band Porches' second studio album Pool (2016), lead vocalist Aaron Maine sings his ode to the automobile with such touching and un-ironic sincerity that the listener is forced the rethink the role of the car in modern life. Maine has explained that the song isn't exactly about a man's love for the automobile, but instead stemmed from the idea of seeing things in a new light. The track certainly does justice to this inspiration: “I just liked the idea of shedding something and how amazing that feels to kind of discover something new or to feel like you’re finding yourself in a different way.”
Maine's appreciation starts off on a pragmatic vein (car = mode of transport), but the automobile's promise of convenient personal travel soon translates into a qualitative change in the driver ('Let the salt carry it/ Away from me... It tells me just how/ I should really feel'). Blending in new wave influences into the indie electronic that characterizes the album, Maine's introspective and emotionally direct vocals seem disembodied from the track's momentum-driven riffs and floor drums.
What does mobility do to the human self? Where is the car taking Maine to? What is he leaving behind? Is it the trip or the destination that really matters? "Car" certainly delivers on the album's ability "to mix the distinctly human with the relentlessly mechanical in a way that conveys longing and isolation beyond just melancholic lyricism" (Marcy Donelson, AllMusic.com). Henry Ford would probably be touched.
