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Port Maria's first release has been long in the making, but the New York duo's debut two-song single is finally out on Sinking Ship Records. In the past 10 years, Justin Stewart and Steve Kelly have recorded sporadic demos but that's about it. Now that they are both in their early 30s, they decided to do some real recordings and give them a proper name. If you are a fan of early bands like Midtown, Hot Rod Circuit, Motion City Soundtrack and No Motiv, you will probably dig 'Lights out' and 'Turned To Ghosts'.

Steve Kelly about the songs:

"It’s been a ridiculously long road to get these two songs out - but I’m thrilled with everything about them.  We recorded these (with two other, yet-to-be-released songs) in 2016 with Mike Oettinger at Cannon Found Soundation (which has since moved from Union City, NJ to Brooklyn, NY).  Tyler from A Great Big Pile of Leaves once again lent his drum talents to these songs.

And then we sat on the tracks for like 4 years.  The first line in “Lights Out” (as-then-recorded) bothered both Justin and I. We planned to go back to the studio to re-record it but… it just never happened. 

In July, Justin and I re-tracked all of the verses at my house with my recording set-up. These tracks sound better than we probably deserve to sound - and there’s a ton of talented people that contributed to making this seem way more legit than I could have imagined they would when I was recording bedroom demos. I feel incredibly grateful to all of them."