Portair’s sweet pop-folk music is the kind of sound that instantly picks you up and transports you off to a beautiful, balmy sunny summer evening where everything is ok. And his latest EP The Light That Gives, released today, is certainly no different.
The Light That Gives has six beautiful new songs which are truly an enchanting dose of folk-pop.
Portair will also release the official video for the unreleased single ‘Fold’ today, a song that appears on the EP. The video continues on where his previous hit, ‘I Didn’t Love You’ left off and is the second part of the story.
“I wrote this song about realizing what I didn’t want or need in my life, that had been built into me from my early days of being a child. It’s specifically about religion and a certain way of thinking which ultimately ruined a big part of my life,” Portair shared.
“I had never stepped away from what I had been told and searched the answers for myself. This song is about stepping into the ‘cold’, the unknown territory of the world, but trusting that it’s the right thing because there is no way I can go back into the ‘fold’ from which I came. This is about faith in yourself, walking into the wilderness with fervor and knowing that the only way is forward, not backwards,” he added.
To celebrate the release of The Light That Gives today and as part of our track by track series, Portair has talked us through each of the songs on his new EP.
‘Paper in The Sky’
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This song is written from a childhood to young adult perspective. It’s all about nostalgia and where life takes you. The paper plane in the sky is a metaphor that I thought of for throwing your faith into the unknown of where life may take you and following it wherever it goes. It’s about being unafraid and trusting in yourself and believing in the power of your own mind.
‘Where the Sun Goes Down’
This song is an upbeat, carefree song about living life. It’s a personal account of stories I’ve lived out in my own life from getting arrested in Berlin, to getting drunk and lost in Budapest, finding and losing love. It’s about not needing a place to call home, except for where you are.
It’s about chasing the sun, following it until it goes down and doing it all again. It’s a message to people to let go and live. Something I often have to tell myself. Sometimes when I feel stuck, I look back at everything I’ve done and all the life I’ve lived and it brings me some comfort, knowing that I have given it my all.
‘I Didn’t Love You’
This song is one of my favorites purely because it was written in a way I’ve never experienced before. I wrote this song in a dream I had. The dream was about discovering that an ex-lover was now also a musician and they had written this song which I had stumbled upon online, I played it and the first verse started and as it got to the chorus, I woke up with tears in my eyes. I’d never experienced that ever, and I immediately pulled out my voice memo app on my phone and recorded what I could remember.
I filled in the blanks that day and had the song written in 20 minutes. It’s a very personal song to me and is about losing someone because of circumstances outside of my control at the time and living with the fear that this person went on to believe that I didn’t love them. At the end of the day, despite everything that happened, I cannot say that I didn’t love her with every part of my being even though it didn’t work out. ‘If this is for the best, I’ll do my best for someone new, to love her the way I didn’t love you’
‘Fold’
Definition of fold : a group of people or institutions that share a common faith, belief, activity, orenthusiasm; His former colleagues would be glad to welcome him back into the fold. b : a flock of sheep.
I wrote this song about realizing what I didn’t want or need in my life, that had been built into me from my early days of being a child. It’s specifically about religion and a certain way of thinking which ultimately ruined a big part of my life. A perception that was conditioned into my mind from the day I was born, only for me to realise as a young adult that I had never questioned anything for myself. I had never stepped away from what I had been told and searched the answers for myself.
This song is about stepping into the ‘cold’, the unknown territory of the world, but trusting that it’s the right thing because there is no way I can go back into the ‘fold’ from which I came. A simplified version is about faith but not in the traditional sense. This is about faith in yourself, walking into the wilderness with fervor and knowing that the only way is forward, not backwards.
‘Where the Sun Goes Down’
This song is an upbeat, carefree song about living life. It’s a personal account of stories I’ve lived out in my own life from getting arrested in Berlin, to getting drunk and lost in Budapest, finding and losing love. It’s about not needing a place to call home, except for where you are.
It’s about chasing the sun, following it until it goes down and doing it all again. It’s a message to people to let go and live. Something I often have to tell myself. Sometimes when I feel stuck, I look back at everything I’ve done and all the life I’ve lived and it brings me some comfort, knowing that I have given it my all.
‘Lying to Myself’
I wrote this song during the end of last year. It was one of those rare moments where I picked up the guitar and the first thing I played was this chord progression and the chorus melody. Soon after, the words started to take shape. By the second verse, everything unraveled, and I realized that this song was something that had been buried within me for almost a decade.; Lying To Myself; comes from the deepest form of trauma my life has encountered and it took many years for me to unpack it to see if I could make sense of it.
I think we all have a tendency to lie to ourselves when we are faced with pulling apart the damage and finding a way around it. We tell ourselves that we’re ok until a decade down the line, we realize we’re not. This song is ultimately about losing your family to divorce, losing contact and connection to a large family that once was and then how that affects the rest of your life.
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Listen to ‘Where The Sun Goes Down’ by Portair:
