Upon it’s release, Spaceport’s Window Seat was #11 Most Added at NACC, and chart ed on NACC’s Top 200 throughout March and April 2023, debuting at #74.
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“The 10 Best Local Songs of 2023”
-Keith Harris, Racket 12.20.23
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“...cada una de las canciones es un universo por sí misma. A veces un rock alternativo muy melódico con murallas de guitarra otras con sintes, otras dream pop.”
-Macarena Lavin, Calipso en super45.fm (Santiago de Chile) 9.26.23
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Read Spaceport’s 8.17.23 interview with CanvasRebel
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Read Spaceport’s 7.27.23 interview with VoyageMinnesota
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Listen to AW’s 4.12.23 interview with Ear Coffee’s Joe Keyport
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“Smoky and drifting synthpop songs populate ‘Window Seat,’ with dreamy melodies floating in a sea of keys.”
-Bandcamp, New and Notable 3.18.23
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“A classical cellist turned indie rocker, Arianna Wegley leads a dreamy pop trio whose tunes'll keep you awake. The standout on their new album, Window Seat, is lead track "Hey Neighbor," a gradually unspooling story of being spotted crying outside her car after leaving a Walgreens, which does sound very specific but also, you know, relatable. Now if I could just figure out which "restaurant that looks like the inside of EPCOT" she's singing about.”
-Racket 3.14.23
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“Cellist Arianna Wegley of St. Paul, Minnesota, sings melancholy, bedroom pop melodies over her precious strings and darling synths. Supported by her partner Todd Olson on drums and friend Liam Moore on bass (both of Robot Slide), together they became the three-piece indie rock band Spaceport. Their starry-eyed, ambient pop tracks pave a path in the galaxy of listeners’ minds for soothing, out-of-this world musical sensations, with classical sensibilities. Distorted guitars, soul-bursting trumpets, heavenly synths, gorgeous string composition, and comforting clarinets weave a dark, pristine dream on their debut LP Window Seat.”
-Terrorbird Media
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“A handful of buttons and minor objects caught throughout a day, that could be a Wednesday or a minor holiday, and a coin.”
There’s a definition line between the land and the beginning of the sky.
But that keeps changing based on what the line of the land looks like.
If the ridge is a little higher, the sky starts a little later.
If the range of mountains blanks out the sun, the sky starts even farther up the way.
Arianna Wegley writes songs somewhere in between that morphing line of unfolding land east and west, and the endless direction toward stars and planets in some sort of northward unknown.
For every hushed statement about Walgreens, “Confection of key lime,” and Elden Ring, there’s a levitating synthesizer sound, or scrubby guitar brandishing a dulled dagger in the midst of a thorn bush.
There’s a light and dark, up and down pattern to how everything collects together. The sound of rainwater gathering in a birdbath under the mask of victorious thunder escaping miles away to roll over roofs where the sun is still shining, for now.
The watching of a storm across the valley, just knowing what the afternoon will close in like.
Wegley, titled as a cellist first, created and arranged these songs in formations that Liam Moore and Todd Olson finished with bass and drums. Wegley carries the majority of instrumentation and vocals in a strangely alien development of sounds and textures in the midst of very, exceptionally normal observations and confessions of life passing right by. On “Window Seat,” the ending hits with some sort of vaporizing guitar as Wegley barely gets out, “in the/Window seat/with a view/You See me/I see you.” Just the bare minimum of description as to what occurs in the moment, but there’s no need for more. Wegley has a handle on singing, and describing in a way that feels concrete without a flower of a word in the pot. This is the dry ground being enough of a place to discover lost items and objects, as plants spark from under rock and fossil.
The ability to so perfectly place story and observation over the thicket of sound balances in a uniqueness that continues the walking trail like a tree lined biosphere of existence that reaches up from the floor into space and back. Space, a part of the reality, but no one knows what is happening deeper out there.
It’s standing on the edge of a boat in the middle of the sea with no idea all that’s existing just beneath the choppy waters. All the whale calls and flickering of fish that no one ever hears or sees.
The humility in the delivery of this album captures a level of excelling arrangements without needing to expand or bloat a single thing. It’s simple on purpose in the right ways. It doesn’t seek to be noticed, it’s good enough to be heard exactly how it is. The ribbons of synth and cello weave like a bowerbird collecting items for a home that matters and needs every detail, but maybe only other birds will notice.
There’s a theme in “space” sounds that allude to the name of the project, but doesn’t feel obvious or overdone. It’s a slicing through a piece of fruit to discover the rind, and the fruit itself, are opposite colors on a wheel that’s spinning.
“Close Call,” defines a level of what this music creates in reality with the words, “A window is a mirror playing tricks/Reflection’s a window/A window's a wall/The wall is made of bricks.
This is the sound of cool rain that washes the graffiti and grime off of walls and leaves a chill in the surfaces, a temperature to recover from, and the low fog that coats front doors and front lawns, and everything feels like it’s not exactly the way it actually is. It’s a mystery in the normality of things we watch pass by every day and never consider.
-Small Album’s “Pick of the Day” review of Window Seat - 3.8.23
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