FREEwilliamsburg: You've coupled the last couple albums with EPs — seems like a lot to do all at once.

With the Spanish EP that came out, Looking for a Power Supply, they said they wanted to do a limited edition EP, so again, it kind of gives me a reason to write songs, like "ok, these are for the album and then I'm going to record and do these extras for the EP." For something like that, a limited edition only coming out in Spain, I don't have to spend a lot of money and go into a studio. I can record at home, which I like to do also. It's cool to have outlets other than "here's my record" and then two years later, "here's my next record."

FREEwilliamsburg: The new album, Bright Ideas, sounds like a rootsy album for you, more Superchunk than I've heard in past Portastatic albums. And there's a solid Springsteen songwriter feel to it.

In the new one? I don't think anyone's said that yet, so that's cool.

FREEwilliamsburg: Especially "I Wanna Know Girls." That's quintessential Springsteen iconic rock. Did you go into this album, since it was recorded live, thinking "Springsteen rock"?

Hard to say. I think since Summer of the Shark came out and we played it live as a trio and kept the trio thing going, I was definitely writing some of the songs for the new record thinking that these songs were going to be these types of songs played by this type of band, a rock band. Portastatic hasn't always had that vibe. I like still being flexible, like tonight doing this solo acoustic show [at Other Records in NYC] - that can still work too. A lot of the songs were written and recorded solo acoustic. But the idea of making a rock record and being able to play it live was very appealing, especially knowing that Superchunk isn't going to be making a record soon or touring. I was definitely anxious to go out and play rock shows.

FREEwilliamsburg: The first few Portastatic records were recorded at home. Was recording at Tiny Telephones with the whole band enjoyable?

Part of me is impatient with making records. I want to hear how it's gonna sound, so I never spent a lot of time recording. We'd just get it done and mix it, and there it was. So at Tiny Telephone's it was cool to be able to spend more time on all of that.

Summer of the Shark was recorded at home, it took months and months. This time I didn't have the option of doing that because our daughter was born, and her room happens to be next to the recording studio at the house (laughs), so I couldn't really make a lot of noise in there anymore.

That wasn't an option, so we got an offer to do the show in San Francisco and they paid for the plane tickets, so it was the perfect opportunity. I'd read a lot about Tiny Telephones and wanted to check it out. It all kinda worked, and it was fun working with Tim from American Music Club. Until Merge started working with AMC, I didn't know that he did engineering stuff, but I talked to him when he came through Chapel Hill on tour, and he worked on Love Songs for Patriots, and it's a great-sounding record. Seemed like the natural thing to do since he was in San Francisco.

FREEwilliamsburg: Were you more involved in production than in the past?

I've always been pretty involved in the production of records we've done, Superchunk or Portastatic. This time, as opposed to other Portastatic records where I'm playing every part or layering everything, I could just go play the songs. It definitely gives it a different vibe.

FREEwilliamsburg: It was all recorded live?

Most of it, yeah. Maybe two songs were done by adding things on, but almost the whole thing was done live.

FREEwilliamsburg: Your daughter was born as you were working on this album?

Yeah, during the summer after Summer of the Shark. I was already starting to write songs for this album.

FREEwilliamsburg: Has being a parent has affected the songs on Bright Ideas?

Yeah, definitely. I think in both the positive viewpoint some of the songs have, and in the depressing viewpoint some of the songs have (laughs). It is great being a parent-it's an inspiring thing, but it also makes you look at the world in a harsher light. As opposed to when you're just an adult depending on yourself, you can just roll through the world and not have to think about it too much. But if you have a kid and think about the kind of world they're gonna have to grow up in, it's a little more depressing to think about, about what's happening in the world.

FREEwilliamsburg: You seem very comfortable with Portastatic, particularly on this record-you've got your brother on drums, Jim on the bass-do you feel like the songwriting is different than it is in Superchunk? Do you and Jim interact differently in this band?

This may sound weird, but we don't really interact that much in Portastatic's songwriting. Jim adds his ideas to the songs, but in Superchunk, we're all writing the songs at the same time. In Portastatic I pretty much have the thing written out, not literally, but I have at least a demo of it. Sometimes there's a bassline, sometimes there's not, but the bulk, the framework is already there. It's definitely a comfortable situation-Matthew has been there playing on Portastatic records since Nature of Sap, and obviously, I've been playing with Jim for 15 years.

It is comfortable. We also have Margaret White playing violin on this tour. That'll be fun-she lives in New York now, but she's from Chapel Hill and has played with the Comas and Cat Power and different people. She adds a lot to what we can do live. The trio thing is great, but there's stuff on the record that you want to hear, strings and things, so it's cool to have that.

FREEwilliamsburg: A lot of the charm in early Portastatic recordings involves the bleeps and crazy things you pick up on tape-do you try to recreate all that live?

It's a pretty different experience. My goal, and I think the goal with Superchunk too, is to write songs that can withstand whatever kind of setting you put them in. Laura doesn't like it too much, but I think the rest of us like doing the acoustic Superchunk things. I think the songs can exist in both realms, and it's the same with Portastatic.

There are definitely songs on records that we don't play, but I think on this record we've played all the songs live except for "Bright Ideas." We will try to play it live, but it's just harder to do, and we haven't done that many shows since the record was recorded. I like having a record where all the songs can be played live, but I don't think you try to make it where the songs sound the same live. You do try to retain what was good about the song on the record.

FREEwilliamsburg: A good song stands alone?

Yeah, but a lot of the Portastatic songs prior to this album were a little more erratic-they were recorded at home, a good deal of them, and they're stranger songs, maybe, not as straight-forward, some instrumentals thrown in there, some electronic things. I was a little insecure about this record, like if we make a record just as a rock band, is it gonna be boring? Because then we're just another rock band. There are like a million rock bands, you know? (laughs) Does the world really need another one of those?

In some ways, I was worried about making something that was just standard-sounding. Because then you're just relying on the songs to make it outstanding. There could be everything but the kitchen sink on a record, and that's distracting enough and pleasant enough, but without that, you wonder if it's still interesting enough to listen to. That remains to be seen, I guess (laughs).

FREEwilliamsburg: Do you feel like you're approaching a Portastatic "sound," or is Portastatic more about trying out all these different possibilities?

It's more like I just have a vague idea in mind. I try to execute it in a way that makes sense. A lot of the thinking with this record was the enjoyment of playing with the trio and the knowledge that we'd be able to tour some after the record. We wanted to make a record that we could just play live. We wanted to make a record that was less erratic and less side-projecty. I like all the Portastatic records-I mean there are definitely some moments I would redo (laughs)-but I think that they definitely give off the air of someone who's just messing around, having fun, and that's cool, but in some ways, it's easier to dismiss a record like that. With Superchunk being inactive right now, I didn't want to make another record that made people think, "it's just a side-project record-I'll wait for the real record to come out." I wanted this to be the real record.

FREEwilliamsburg: Was Summer of the Shark, with its thematic heaviness, a move toward that "real recordness"?

Definitely. There was more rock on that record, too. That was, again, starting to get focused. I think Bright Ideas is the first record I made that I was able to get down to 10 songs. That was deliberate. I think records are too long because they can be. Superchunk's never been able to get an album down to 10 songs because we can never agree on which songs to kick off. So I wanted to be in charge on this one. There are songs we left off that I really like, but I wanted it to be very concise. Summer of the Shark was a move toward that, but not quite as focused as Bright Ideas.

FREEwilliamsburg: Summer of the Shark got a lot of acclaim, some of it having to do with how you wrote about September 11, which is nearly impossible because of the Toby Keith kind of bullshit out there. Your approached seemed to attempt to reflect on this huge event in a very small-scale way. Did you go into it thinking "I'm going to write an album about this"?

I had a few songs started, maybe the lyrics, that I was writing when Superchunk was on tour. Here's to Shutting Up came out September 18, so we were on tour right after 9/11. I actually came to New York on September 13 because some friends who live in New York were in North Carolina and needed to come back here. That was CMJ, and Superchunk was supposed to play. They reopened the Bowery Ballroom the night the show was supposed to happen, so we still had a show, but the rest of the band didn't come up, some bands made it, some bands didn't. It was a very emotional night, but I'm glad that we did it.

Anyway, I drove up for that and was here right after that, and that brought it even closer to home. Superchunk went on the road right after that, and I wrote a lot of lyrics on tour. After I did a few of them, I started designing the record, thinking that it would be interesting and a challenge to make a record that actually has a theme, even though it's probably not going to make much sense really-it's there in my mind anyway (laughs).

FREEwilliamsburg: So you wrote it deliberately with a theme in mind?

It was deliberate and was a challenge because it's hard to do something like that without being goofy or not sensitive enough or too reverent. I really liked Springsteen's record, The Rising, that came out after that. I think there are some great songs on that record. It's funny because reading about that record, some of the songs you're convinced are about 9/11, were songs he wrote before that. He added more songs later, and it became The Rising, but some of those songs, like half or something, were written before. In the frame of mind you're in when listening, you can add your own things to it.

But anyway, I was happy with the way it came out. It's easy for me to write songs that are vague, cool images or something like that, but it's harder to write songs that are more straight-forward and direct about those things. That's a goal of mine sometimes-it's easy to slip back into the vagueness. I wouldn't want to write a record that's all literal and easy to decipher-that's boring too-but I think it's good to shoot for a balance.

FREEwilliamsburg: What was the first concert you went to?

I went to jazz concerts when I was young. My dad would take us.

FREEwilliamsburg: In North Carolina?

No, this is in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We moved when I was 13. Or 12. But the first rock big rock concert I went to was very Floridian. It was Molly Hatchett at the Sunrise Musical Theater in Florida. I was psyched, it was great. For a couple years there I saw a lot of things like that-you know, Van Halen.

FREEwilliamsburg:Are your parents musicians?

Well, my dad plays piano and played clarinet growing up, stuff like that. They're definitely into music and are supportive of the idea of seeing bands and being in bands.

FREEwilliamsburg: You're always teasing us with titles like "Here's to Shutting Up," What's the future status of Superchunk?

I think after all the touring after Here's to Shutting Up, everyone was burnt out and wanted to take a break anyway, then I had a kid, and Laura had a baby last fall, so that kind of extended the hiatus. But we did a little tour when Cup of Sand came out and did a couple shows this summer. And we have a few new songs written, but the way we write songs, we all have to be in the same place at the same time. Our schedules have to allow that. What we've talked about is doing a record next year, like writing early in the year and recording after that.

FREEwilliamsburg: And for Portastatic after this tour?

I always like bands that put out a lot of records. When we recorded this record, there were other songs we'd done demos for already that we didn't learn for Bright Ideas and a couple extras we'd done that didn't make it to the record, so there's gonna be another Portastatic record coming out next year.

FREEwilliamsburg: Full length?

Yeah, we're going to try to keep it that way. Hopefully by the time I get all the songs done for the next record-it's about half-way done right now-it'll be time for Superchunk to start writing some songs for another record. You just have to look at the space in front of you and figure out what you can do in that time.

Portastatic's new LP, Bright Ideas, is now available from Merge Records. Check out their tour dates and line-ups (all hail the Rosebuds, Tenement Halls and John Vanderslice!) at portastatic.com.