It’s not actually the case, but for a while there it felt like the entire indie rock world had its pirate hook snagged in some musical manifestation of the nautical theme. Slint charted the course (to Robert Christgau’s disdain) with Spiderland, and many followed: Some to greatness, others to soggy mediocrity. But seldom, if ever, was there a band that could evoke the seafaring muse and back it up with real life experience. Port O’Brien, an Oakland, CA based folk rock ensemble, is tied lyrically and thematically to the remote fishing community in Alaska where frontman Van Pierszalowski has spent his summers since boyhood. But as the band receives increasing acclaim, their relationship with the seas of the north is bound for change.

“It blows my mind how similar touring is to being on a boat. You’re completely stuck with the same people the entire time—that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there’s just limited interaction with the outside,” Pierszalowski said. “A lot of people at shows think that we are from Alaska, or live there. But we’re Californians first and foremost; [Alaska is] just where we make our bounty.”

Port O’Brien takes its name from the now-defunct fish cannery on Kodiak Island, Alaska where Pierszalowski’s parents met in the ’60s. The son of a commercial fisherman, Pierszalowski has spent every summer since age 15 netting salmon on his father’s 48-foot vessel, the Shawnee. The experience of leaving a normal life in California every summer to undertake hard, often dangerous labor in turbulent Alaskan waters provided the emotional raw material from which Pierszalowski, with the aid of girlfriend Cambria Goodwin, crafted personal vignettes detailing struggles with identity, isolation, and the strains that an errant life puts on their relationship.

“When I write about Alaska, it has to be done literally, because there’s nothing else like it that I can relate it to in ‘normal’ life,” Pierszalowski said. “But songwriting for me is very personal, anyway, and I think Cambria’s songwriting is even more like that.”

“The only time I can write a song is when I’m feeling emotional upheaval,” Goodwin said. “I think that songs come out with more passion if there’s a lot of emotion and experience driving the song.”

That emotional drive manifests itself through Port O’Brien’s dramatic live performances, during which the audience is encouraged, if not commanded, by Pierszalowski to take an active role. At every show, Port O’Brien orchestrates group-sung choruses, bouts of cathartic screaming, and set-ending dance parties during which the band distributes pots, pans, and utensils for the audience to bang on stage. Skeptics might dismiss these practices as gimmicky, but it forges a connection with their fans that few, if any, of Port O’Brien’s peers can boast. That chemistry has earned them some high-profile fans: A fatefully well-executed show at San Francisco’s Make Out Room in February 2007 so impressed M. Ward that the celebrated musician named Port O’Brien his favorite new band in an interview with Pitchfork.

“The energy was there, and the songs were there… two really simple things that you don’t get very often,” Ward told Pitchfork.

That energy and those songs were captured on a pair of bedroom recorded, self-released EPs, the highlights of which were compiled on The Wind and the Swell (American Dust, 2007). Espoused with a sparse, acoustic folk sound, that work differs from the current Port O’Brien. On their self-released debut album, All We Could Do Was Sing, the band has added new members, become more ambitious in their arrangements, and splendidly expounded upon the motifs that originally charmed their fans.

“There’s still that back porch acoustic sound that’s really intense, but with added elements of electric guitars and strings,” Pierszalowski said.