| The Nature of Sap | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Portastatic |
| Cover: | Thenatureofsap.jpeg |
| Released: | March 11, 1997 |
| Genre: | Indie rock |
| Label: | Merge[1] |
| Producer: | Mac McCaughan |
| Prev Title: | Slow Note from a Sinking Ship |
| Prev Year: | 1995 |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Next Title: | Summer of the Shark |
| Next Year: | 2003 |
The Nature of Sap is Portastatic's third studio album.[2] It was released on Merge Records on March 11, 1997.
The album was recorded at Duck Kee Studios in Mebane, North Carolina, during the summer of 1996, except tracks 4, 7-9, and 11, which were recorded on 4-track cassette on "Old NC 86." Matt McCaughan plays drums on many of the album's tracks.[3]
The Tucson Weekly wrote that "Portastatic seems to be what happens when an aging punk rocker and his ambitious musical vision 'mature': passivity, depression and terminal boredom."[4] Phoenix New Times called the album "a multilayered opus of pop precocity."[5] Paste deemed it the band's most underrated album, calling it "a downcast jazzy pop record that dabbles with electronic minimalism and features some of [Mac] McCaughan’s best song writing."[6] SF Weekly wrote that The Nature of Sap "finds the normally manic Superchunk frontman in an extended soporific spelunk through the caves of his waking dreams."[7]