Porches, the recording project of NYC’s Aaron Maine, announced his sixth studio album Shirt, due out September 13 on Domino. Shirt is part angsty fantasy, part confessional melodrama – a rock album that oscillates between reality and make-believe to reflect both the innocence of suburban youth and the frayed reality of adulthood. A fusion of chaotic impulses, insatiable desires, and a perpetual yearning, Shirt plays with the tension between one’s person and persona – the weight of your dreams crashing up against your reality. The result is something both familiar and uncanny, an anthemic tribute to this intrinsic duality built on crashing and caressing sounds.

Porches released new single “Joker,” featuring an intoxicated kick and clap. “God’s grace” is repeated like a mantra, nodding to a pastoral and tropey Americana – in this case a boy and his dog, but elsewhere a girl in a well, a flag on a pole. Shirt’s hyper-sentimentality is always tempered by hinting at something darker pervading underneath.  “Joker” comes via a video directed by Nick Harwood alongside director of photography Ben Carey. This Is Pop? today’s song of the day is here for you.