“It was a very gradual shift,” Aaron Maine acknowledges ahead of his set on Tuesday over email.

“There really wasn’t any point where it felt like I was doing anything drastically different. I mean, I was aware that the recordings were sounding a lot different than previous stuff, but it just felt good and right.” Maine is referring to this year’s Pool, an album that yanks his Porches project from the stoned, basement show-dwelling haze of their beloved LP Slow Dance In The Cosmos and places it amongst enough yacht rock synthesizers to make a convincing soundtrack for some brooding ’80s cop drama.

Pool should come as no surprise to those who followed Porches’ sets over the past couple years. Signing to indie heavyweights Domino Records felt inevitable for both Maine and tour mate Alex Giannascoli after the likes of Rolling Stone and Pitchfork eventually caught on to their DIY-built efforts. Although living up to national hype can be a death knell for a bedroom-recording songwriter, both Porches and Alex G turned out their most notably confident sets on Tuesday, signaling the success of their “gradual shifts” despite their frequent visits to Boston in the past.

Fellow Domino-signees Your Friend opened in billowing layers of shoegazing ambience,
channeling Beach House’s minimalism with a secret weapon in singer/songwriter Taryn Blake Miller’s ethereal voice.

Depending on one’s open-mindedness, the fact that the show’s three artists only had the same record label as their common ground felt most thrilling as Miller’s coos eventually gave way to Alex G’s pubescent screams during “Icehead”. Pulling largely from last year’s Beach Music and its predecessor DSU, Alex and his self-described “best band in the world” covered a sizable chunk of his extensive catalog despite broken strings and near-constant song requests.

“Because we are the best band in the world, we’re definitely going to play every single request,” Giannascoli sarcastically quipped at the
umpteenth call for “Nintendo 64”, eventually giving in a few songs later to play fan favorite b-side “Sarah” solo.

Giannascoli himself has morphed into something of a showman, maintaining his goofy, pseudo-braggadocios stage presence (including announcing said “best band in the world” title after his guitarist maintained a tower of Porches hats on his head) while effortlessly expanding on favorites like “Mary” and set closer “Brite Boy”. Even Alex’s piercing shrieks come with an air of assured confidence in place of the smirking, “I can’t believe I just did that” look of years past.

Sandwiched in between, Maine and the Porches band easily took the “Most Changed” superlative of the night with a Pool-heavy set. Opening on the one-two punch of “Glow” and pre-Pool single “Forgive”, Maine encouraged continued dancing with gleeful, George Michael-esque shaking and frequent hand gesture instructions. This iteration of Porches doesn’t hide any aspirations of being ready for festival season, breaking down a few cross-armed people into bobbing along to “Mood” and hopping to (should-be) single “Car”.

The set’s Slow Dance-heavy later half brought some relief to older fans, but revisiting songs like “Franklin the Flirt” and “Permanent Loan” shows the slight distance between Maine and his past.

“It’s all the same… Ronald Paris is the new Porches,” Maine offered in our conversation regarding his dance-friendly alter ego. “It’s just me where i’m at now, but also another avenue to release music. Ronald Paris just feels fresh.” The freshness never felt more apparent when, after a crowd member yelled to “bring on the sad” after “Headsgiving”, Maine responded with a stoic “no”.

Whether the differences between Slow Dance and Pool, or between Porches and Ronald Paris are supposed to represent something as illusory as the divide between happiness and “the sad”, Maine maintains a honest enjoyment in his set, regardless of if makes you move or scratch your head.

After Tuesday though, our bets are on Porches to uncross a lot of show-going arms this summer.

For more photos from the show, check out our slideshow below.