With thousands of high-rise apartment dwellers in earshot, the great band Porches played on a solar-powered stage set up in the backyard of a youth hostel on the upper west side of Manhattan late Saturday night.

The gig was part of a day-long arts and music festival on the grounds of Hostelling International – NYC at 104th and Amsterdam.

A fence topped with barbed-wire separates the hostel property from the perimeter of the Frederick Douglass Houses, a sprawling public housing project with 17 buildings. The band’s volume set off a car alarm in the adjacent parking lot and elicited yells from nearby residents unhappy with the noise.

Porches went on at 1020 PM and played about 40 minutes. Front man Aaron Maine wore a jacket emblazoned with his pseudonym “Ronald Paris” (pronounced Par-eee) on the back. He shared a quick smooch with bandmate Greta Kline on stage just before starting the gig.

The band didn‘t appear to adhere to a pre-determined set list. They played “Jesus Universe” after a fan in the audience yelled for it between songs early in the performance. The brilliantly written number relies heavily on Seiya Jewell’s keyboard sounds which came through clear as a bell.

Shambles kept his shirt on – what with a pretty good chill in the night air. The Porches drummer (real name: Cameron Wisch) is crisp with the contact and a pleasure to watch.

I can’t get enough of this band right now. They play a lot of shows in the area, although you have to keep an eye out given the somewhat uneven nature of the band’s linkage to its fandom. Facebook appears to be their primary PR vehicle at the moment. The Porches Bandcamp page (which was my initial point of exposure to the band after hearing them on the radio) keeps a list of upcoming live dates although the hostel show wasn’t touted on it.

Admission to the event was $20 at the door. 12-ounce bottles of craft beer were four bucks.

Attendees who needed to use the bathroom were directed to beautiful in-house facilities at the hostel.

With 672 beds, this particular hostel is the largest in North America. It’s a stunning building. It was built in the 1880’s and was a nursing home for many years. It became a hostel in 1990 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. I got a little lost trying to exit the place after the gig. I wandered through much of the first floor and was amazed at its cleanliness and orderliness.