September is a big month for friends and musicians Porches and Liam Benzvi. Porches record, Shirt, is out on the 13th, while Liam’s record, …And His Splash Band, is out on the 27th. Both albums are coming-of-age melodramas that explore the pathway from youthful innocence to the distorted complexities of adulthood, just from different angles: Porches’ tale stems from remote, rural suburbia, while Brooklyn-native Benzvi describes a world of fleeting city encounters. In anticipation of both artists’ new records, here Porches and Benzvi take turns asking the other quick-fire questions.

Porches asks Liam Benzvi

Porches: Can you remember the first time you ever performed – how did it go?
Liam Benzvi: I played Linus in You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown. I think I killed it.

P: What’s your favourite and least favourite thing about New York at this moment?
LB: New York is a terrible, abhorrent place to live as an artist. I grew up here and I feel totally ground down. I’ve worked so many jobs, made just enough to get by, and saved nothing. My debt is crazy. I want somewhere else to rise to the forefront of culture. I will move there.

P: What is my best quality?
LB: Aaron you are extremely kind.

P: Favourite New York artist currently?
LB: Porches.

P: Worst show experience?
LB: I was at SXSW many years ago and the guitarist broke a string on one guitar, then a string on his back-up guitar, and then while he ran off-stage to search for a busker on the street that could loan him a guitar, I did stand up comedy for ten minutes, and it ended.

P: Guilty pleasure New York activity?
LB: Going to a bar with just a journal and thinking “Wow, everyone must be so impressed with me.”

P: Your videos and live performances are some of the most put-together, well-executed and thought-out I’ve seen. I feel like this has something to do with your background in theatre. How has that informed your music and performances?
LB: I was frequently cast as villains in my acting days, so inhabiting those roles and making physical choices is something I do when I perform. I feel like I learned how to use my hips and shoulders and got to work on my footwork in the “thee-ay-ter”. The first time I threw out my back was when I was nineteen playing an old man.

P: Dust – I love this song, what does it mean to you and what were you thinking about or experiencing when you wrote it?
LB: Dust was a shedding of the nonsense and stress I felt at the time. I gave myself permission to be angsty. It means a lot to me because it’s only the start of what I want to be a really angry album that I next write. [laughs]

P: Date night you’re cooking, what’s on the menu?
LB: Pasta Puttanesca hands down. Maybe a salad. White Claw.

P: Song you absolutely cannot stand?
LB: Anything by Lin Manuel Miranda. He better stay away from me.

Liam Benzvi asks Porches

Liam Benzvi: Your song Itch… It begs the question, when did you first realise that snitches get stitches?
Porches: I don’t fully get this question but, one time we got caught snorting pixie sticks on the back of the bus on a field trip and I was the one that ratted the rest of my friends out. I think that was the first time I heard the term, luckily I didn’t get stitches. Maybe if I had heard it before I wouldn’t have squealed.

LB: The cute pic of you as a young man on the Shirt album cover – is that an early selfie?
P: The first selfie I can remember taking. Up in Vermont next to Lake Champlain on my little digicam. I wish I had the memory card. I remember liking it because I thought I looked ‘forlorn’. [laughs]

LB: What’s the best time you’ve ever had hanging out with me?
P: Touring with Liam Benzvi was a blast, summer camp energy, zippin’ around in that little van, the open road, bunch of lads, yeehaw, the best.

LB: What’s the last thing I texted you?
P: “But anyway we don’t have to do this interview thing at all honestly lol but if we do, I believe it’s due the 25th. “

LB: You mention the “pound” in a few of the songs. Tell me more about the pound and its significance to you.
P: I think what I like about the pound is it’s where you go when you’ve misbehaved, or have been abandoned, or have run astray. Sort of a place for outcasts. I think in Joker I’m sort of taking myself to the pound, like turning myself in. And in Rag when I “recognise you from the pound tonight/really hope I see you round tonight”, it feels like we’re celebrating our flaws.

LB: I love Joker I listen to it at least once a day, to be honest. Do you know when you’ve got yourself an earworm? What makes an earworm? Are you a joker?
P: It makes me really happy you like that song. I did sort of feel that it was an “earworm” when I first made it, as bizarre as the song is. I was surprised when it came out of my mouth, which I think is usually a good thing, even if I can’t necessarily explain why it did.

LB: In an era where people are obsessed with “eras”- what Porches-“era” is this?
P: Return of the goat era.

LB: What’s your go-to excuse for not wanting to do something, go to an event, meet up with someone, leave the house?
P: My excuse is like, not responding, and then apologising the next day.

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