This article originally appeared in our September 2015 print edition. 

Peter McLaughlin launched his music career in Portland, Maine, and never looked back.

McLaughlin’s work as a drummer, composer, sound engineer, producer, and collaborator makes him one of the highest-regarded champions of the city’s music scene. His new project—Pretty Purgatory, which launched late last year—is both an Americana and folk-focused record label and an art collective. The label has released new offerings by Family Planning; Butcher Boy; Lisa/Liza; and McLaughlin’s own band, The Milkman’s Union. The latest is a split 7″ single featuring Maine’s Jacob Augustine backed by the psych-folk band Bad Braids from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Peter McLaughlin at SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine.

“It’s easily my proudest release so far—from music, production value, right down to the art and packaging, designed collaboratively by Jakob Battick, Megan Biscieglia, and Tom Ryan,” McLaughlin says.

What is it about this coastal city, with a modest population of just over 66,000 and a reputation that rests more on chefs than musicians, that attracted the Needham, Massachusetts, native? It turns out that while Portland’s culinary diversity lures tourists, its cultural vibrancy has inspired an influx of savvy, dynamic, and creative music makers.

Upon his 2010 graduation from Bowdoin College, where he studied composition with celebrated American composer Elliott Schwartz, McLaughlin flirted with the idea of moving to a larger metropolitan area before turning his focus to Portland. “I was choosing between Boston, New York, Portland, and Northampton [Massachusetts]. I thought that the Portland music scene was honestly more interesting. It seemed to be a tight-knit community of people creating exciting music, and I wanted to be a part of it.”

On top of running his record label, McLaughlin also programs SPACE Gallery’s musical performances.

McLaughlin immersed himself in the scene by expanding on his college job experience as a soundman and talent booker for Bowdoin’s campus pub. He landed a gig at the busy nonprofit arts-and-music venue SPACE Gallery. Today he is the organization’s music programmer, bringing in such notable acts as Screaming Females, Death Vessel, and Today Is the Day. It’s a job that allows him the flexibility to continue touring as a musician.

“I’ve hit the road hard these last couple months, doing short tours and multi-week runs,” McLaughlin says. “I’ve traveled all over, and my travels always reaffirm what I know about Portland—that it’s a unique place. You get all the niceties of a small town with many of the advantages of a big city.

“It is attractive to young people, artists, developers, and the folks moving into these developments for the same reasons—it’s a thriving, artistic town,” he says. “And all of these people need to be careful that Portland remain just that.”

Peter McLaughlin’s Five Under-the-Radar Musical Paragons of Maine

Tom Kovacevic
Oud-playing Arabic music cognoscente. Weaver of delicate and idiosyncratic songs like no others.

Caethua
Enchanting hymns truly out of the forest. Makes bleakness resplendent like the winters she knows so intimately.

Big Blood
High priests of don’t-call-it-psychfreak-folk-new-weird-whatever-because-it’s-just-transcendent-goddamn-music.

Asa Irons
Exalted dirges, full of light and grit, like the salt of the New England earth. Always sounds like home.

Colby Nathan
Torch bearer and medium of feelings: nervous laughter, wide-eyed awe, honest tears, and subtle serenity.

Peter McLaughlin – owner, Pretty Purgatory
Portland, Maine
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Photography by Cara Slifka

The post Indie Music’s Maine Man appeared first on Take Magazine.

It is filled to the brim with folklore; the ghost of a young boy haunts the halls and has trouble spelling through a Ouija board, having passed before learning his ABCs. What differentiates this farmhouse from the rest is its recent history as a sanctuary and gestation space for New England musicians. The home warbles melancholic sound.

Photo by June West

Asa Irons lived in the house on and off through the early 2000s, creating and performing pastoral folk music and bringing his friends around to play. He joined the outsider folk group, Feathers, and played in the stoner metal band, Witch. In Behind a Hill, a documentary about “New Weird America” and the underground music of the region, Irons sits in the Barrington barn and speaks of his love for the area, how it remains his source of inspiration. Irons, it seems, sparked a musical flame in the house that has not gone out.

In 2011, lo-fi psych-rock group MMOSS moved into the house and spent several years recording inside and touring from the old walls. Then, it housed psych-folk group, Soft Eyes. Rachel Neveu, a member of both MMOSS and Soft Eyes, is the current and longest standing resident of the house. She and her husband/collaborator, Lukas Goodreault, also of MMOSS and Soft Eyes, have witnessed a constant flow of bands over the years in the house. It’s caught the sounds of Herbcraft, Lina Tullgren, Bong Wish, Merlyn’s Magic Music Box, The Miggs, and countless others. It’s captured the sounds of the New England web, the interminable unfurling of a widespread and longstanding community.

Photo by John Andrews

Today, the house is the nesting ground of John Andrew’s project, John Andrews and The Yawns. He’s spent the last year fastidiously writing and recording in the house for his upcoming album, Bad Posture, which is due to come out on the Woodsist record label in March of this year. Andrews is a mainstay of New England’s freaky musical network. He has toured extensively with his groups Quilt and Woods and has recorded with Kevin Morby, EZTV, and Widowspeak. Now, as Asa Irons did, he’s taken to the woods to work on his own project. He feeds the wood stove and plays to the trees, honors the house with sound. Andrews describes his music as good old-fashioned rock n’ roll. “I like music that’s timeless,” he says, moseying around the house in his overalls. He croons over the keys, embodying the title of his upcoming album, bent over his piano and lulling his listeners.

Photo by John Andrews

Three quarters’ of The Yawns reside in the house now: Andrews, Neveu, Goodreault, and Joey Schneider, the group’s bassist, and its drummer, Keven Lareau, is no stranger to the house. They exemplify the intermingling of New England’s psychedelic underground. They’ll be touring the northeast with Hand Habits (also on Woodsist Records) in February. If you catch them, you’ll hear the Barrington house in Andrews’ songs. He will sing to you, “live free or die,” and there you’ll be placed in the yard, echoing through the web of New England’s folk past, its psychedelic present, and its unfolding future.

Photo by John Andrews

Top photo by June West

The post New Weird America in an Old New England House appeared first on Take Magazine.