Editor’s Note: On Friday, December 5, Brooklyn-based and Salt Lake City-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jack Sperry will release his debut album under the moniker Port Ross, entitled Nighttime at Gardner Hall. It’s an album he’s worked on since 2017.
According to a press release, the album was “written, recorded, and performed by Sperry and mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Alan Douches (Sufjan Stevens, Angel Olsen, Lucy Dacus, Animal Collective)” and is a “record rooted in place and time,
composed of songs written over the last several years and recorded in just as many different places, such as the University of Utah concert hall, from which it gets its name.”
Informed by self-taught musical methodologies, it was constructed via a growing collection of found instruments and natural sounds, and made whole through Sperry’s heartfelt and earnest lyricism.”
If you’re a fan of The Microphones + Mount Eerie, Neutral Milk Hotel, Beat Happening, Dirty Projectors, Nick Drake, Black Country New Road, Elliott Smith, and/or Radiohead, we think you’ll enjoy Port Ross.
Sperry and his band will perform a record-release show on the day of the album’s release at Ridgewood Commons in Ridgewood, NY.
SWT is excited to exclusively premiere an album stream a day early and share an artist essay Sperry wrote about how he found growth as an artist while creating the album.
When I started Nighttime at Gardner Hall, I was 19 years old. I still lived in my dad’s basement. I was in my sophomore year of college. I didn’t know what Pro Tools was. I had just quit my high school band.
Yesterday, I was late to work because I was submitting that album to streaming services, 6 years later. I’m 25 now. 19 is another lifetime.
Nighttime at Gardner Hall is basically my whole history of recorded music. When I think about starting that album, having no idea what I was doing and really only knowing I was now making a solo album, it’s kind of hard to understand how to connect that to the modern day. Mixing those stems, I feel like I’m working with a high schooler. They’re not well-recorded. But, at the same time, I feel like I’m working with a kid who doesn’t know what’s not supposed to be possible. I really thought I was making one of the greatest albums of all time. And who can tell him it’s not true! Props to that arrogant kid for believing in himself when there was absolutely no proof otherwise.
I don’t know how to connect that period to the modern day. I don’t know why Nighttime happened. It’s a mystery. But I know that I have to make more music. I have to finish the new songs and, in however many years, I have to release them. That’s just how it is. And that’s how it was for Nighttime.
This album was my archive. It was the writing that consummated my life. It showed me on the outside what I felt inside and couldn’t see before. I don’t think there’s anything better I could have been doing with my life.
Jack Sperry
Contributor
Port Ross is a place — specifically, it’s a natural harbor housing a cluster of subantarctic islands offshore from Auckland, NZ; Port Ross is also a name — specifically, that of the indie folk recording project of Brooklyn-by-way-of-Salt Lake City songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jack Sperry. The 10-song Port Ross debut album, Nighttime at Gardner Hall, is finally out on December 5. Written, recorded, and performed by Sperry and mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Alan Douches (Sufjan Stevens, Angel Olsen, Lucy Dacus, Animal Collective), it is a record rooted in place and time, composed of songs written over the last several years and recorded in just as many different places, such as the University of Utah concert hall from which it gets its name. Informed by self-taught musical methodologies, it was constructed via a growing collection of found instruments and natural sounds, and made whole through Sperry’s heartfelt and earnest lyricism, inspired by the likes of Phil Elverum, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, and Neutral Milk Hotel.
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/portross/nighttime-at-gardner-hall
