Porches, Mackeeper
Johnny Brenda’s
1201 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia
July 1, 2026
Hello kind readers and welcome to JULY. It’s summer all over, it’s hot as hell out, it’s bring-an-extra-shirt-and-maybe-a-towel-everywhere weather, it feels like Phoenix in Fishtown (hainted), and at JB’s last night, people kept saying it “felt like 2013 was back in a big way.” I’m feeling it. Porches is playing loud rock music again, and I confess I missed a chance to catch it the first time around, when it was the stuff of NYU dorm rooms and peak Bushwick loft parties; as my friend Will put it walking into the live room, “Some things change, some things stay the same.”
But first: Mackeeper! The brother duo took the stage wearing their own merch (shirts that say, all-caps in blue text, “MACKEEPER,” and under that in all-caps red, “THIS COULD BE REAL”) and proceeded to rip through a set of mostly high-energy, rambunctious, winking and bratty electronics–and-drum-machines-and-guitars pop-rock. (The frontguy eventually ripped off his MACKEEPER shirt to reveal a plain white tanktop underneath; crowd cheering ensued.) Their songs were heavily auto-tuned, unrelentingly hooky and generally ridiculous, with natural showman panache; mostly they played unreleased songs which will see the light of day “if our bitchass label lets us put them out.” For me the highlight might have been a song called “Katie,” a weird-as-fuck, irreverent, moody, antagonistic “love song” that was absolutely like something Ween would make: “You’re dirty, Katie / Your diaper needs changing / I wanna tear off all your clothes / I wanna lay between your toes / I wanna go where no one goes / I wanna be your little ghost.” Included a deliciously stupid neologism combining “complicated” and “Katie” (I’ll let you figure that out). Another song, “Indigo,” lifted its flow from Usher’s “U Remind Me,” and I thought favorably throughout of things I like from Blaketheman1000 and even, in sing-song moments, The Cure – when I wasn’t hearing tons of other '90s touchstones. I liked the weird, funny stuff best and thought they set the table perfectly for Porches.
At one point, Aaron Cooper Maine, the brains behind Porches, said, “I fuck heavy with Johnny Brenda’s.” In the packed, dark, rowdy, hot summer crowd, I felt emboldened to yell out, “What else do you fuck with?” He paused. “Sex. And kissing [crowd cheers]; and holding hands [more cheering]; and Mackeeper.” (Maine referred to them earlier as “scientifically proven the best band in the world.”) Porches is back on stage touring behind their new album MASK, the latest missive in Maine’s continual refining and updating of his rock ideal. And the band put on a goddamn great rock n' roll show, heavy and humid, filled with swagger and sway, effortlessly cool, with that great balanced tension between big-hearted swings and molten feelings next to a detached, hidden removed quality. “Everything I said is a lie. Ever,” was a typical Maine deadpan between songs that were personal paeans to beauty and scuzz. As truly awesome and fun as the rock set was, it was the encore, when a shirtless Maine sat on a Pelican case alone at the keyboard – “Alright, I know how to play these two songs” – to play fan-favorite singalongs “rangerover” and “Country,” that felt most blissful, most cathartic. I looked around at faces bathed in black, purple and red light smiling and singing those words – “I wanna live, I wanna live, I wanna…” – and it felt like summer in full force; at the climax of “Country,” the room singing “Break the water with your arms,” I extended mine and pointed my open water bottle directly at my face, mostly missing my mouth. I already miss spring, but July’s off to a good start.
