Formed in 2005 around the talents of Van Pierszalowski, Cambria Goodwin, Caleb Nichols, and Joshua Barnhart, California's Port O'Brien occupy the same idiosyncratic alternative folk/indie rock landscape as Jason Molina, Will Oldham, and Pavement. The various bandmembers have day jobs that find them working long hours in bakeries, as well as the fishing boats and salmon canneries in and around Kodiak Island, Alaska; the group's debut album for the American Dust label (The Wind and the Swell) was therefore aptly named, drawing on influences as disparate as Neil Young and Bright Eyes. The similarly themed Threadbare arrived in 2009. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi