After releasing his debut album Worlds in 2014 to great acclaim, Porter Robinson spent years battling writer's block and depression. He reemerged in 2018 with a fantastic rave project called Virtual Self, and this year saw the first new Porter Robinson single in six years, the triumphant "Get Your Wish." His new song "Something Comforting," out today, draws a bold, glittering line underneath his comeback: it starts off with frosty synth strings straight out of the map screen of a 32-bit RPG, and expands into the affecting pop songwriting the Robinson project is known for. Listen above.
On Twitter, Robinson gave some insight into how deeply tied "Something Comforting" is to his return to music: "'Something Comforting', I began it at what I would say was the peak of that struggle," he says. "I was trying for hundreds of hours a week to make something new, and trying so many new ideas, and just feeling unhappy with everything, feeling really, really critical of everything that I was doing, and just feeling like nothing was good enough, and just at the absolute creative low point. And I was really beginning to question whether or not I would ever be able to make music again. And that was a very scary thought to me.”
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The song contains some of the first material Robinson wrote that he was happy with after writer's block took hold, specifically the fluttering keys just before the hook. "That was the very first thing that I knew I was going to keep,” he says. Five years later, and the song is completed.
Thumbnail photo by Dan Regan
