Portastatic

All Music Guide:

Mac McCaughan became an indie rock hero while fronting Superchunk and by founding and managing the successful Merge Records -- Portastatic was the outlet for his solo recordings and songs that didn't quite fit his day job band. The side project began in 1992 when Tom Sharpling of 18 Wheeler Records asked McCaughan to release some of his lo-fi four-track recordings; he obliged with the singles "Sandals with White Socks" and "Starter." Then in 1994 McCaughan released an entire Portastatic album, I Hope Your Heart Is Not Brittle, followed by the Scrapbook EP and more albums, 1995's Slow Note from a Sinking Ship and 1997's The Nature of Sap, which progressively became less lo-fi in nature. Released in 2000, the De Mel, de Melão EP paid homage to classic Brazilian artists like Caetano Veloso and Arnaldo Baptista. In 2001 McCaughan returned with Looking for Leonard, the score to a film written and directed by Superchunk fans Matt Bissonette and Steven Clark.

Around this time Superchunk went into semi-retirement and Portastatic became McCaughan's full-time group and a real band with revolving membership (though often including Superchunk'sJim Wilbur on drums). The full-length Summer of the Shark was released in 2003, followed by an album of covers and live songs (Autumn Was a Lark) later that same year. As Merge's profile in the indie world and beyond continued to grow (Arcade Fire and Spoon even reaching the upper reaches of the Billboard charts), so did the quality of Portastatic's output. Bright Ideas (2005) and Be Still Please (2006) are excellent albums that exhibit McCaughan's first-rate songwriting, and his 2006 soundtrack for Who Loves the Sun shows off his arranging and composing skills. In 2008 the band released a career-spanning collection of rarities and singles, Some Small History.

Wikipedia:

Portastatic is an American indie rock band founded in the early 1990s by Mac McCaughan. Portastatic began as a solo project for McCaughan, lead singer and guitarist of the indie rock band Superchunk. Since then it has evolved into a full-fledged band, which sometimes includes Superchunk guitarist Jim Wilbur and McCaughan's brother Matthew.

Tom Scharpling of 18 Wheeler fanzine (and later a popular DJ on WFMU) was so impressed by McCaughan's solo material that he cajoled him into releasing it under the fanzine's own imprint; so came 1993's "Starter" 7". Since then, under the Portastatic moniker, McCaughan has recorded several records drawing on a number of genres, including traditional indie rock, lo-fi, soundtrack and Brazilian music.

The name "Portastatic" is derived from the TASCAM Portastudio home recording device. Due to the quality of the recordings, Mac McCaughan added "static" to "porta" to form "Portastatic."