Portugal. The Man with Local Natives
By now, the peripatetic trail etched out by Portugal. The Man is well documented. The band's nomadic path snakes down the Cascades, starting first in Wasilla, Alaska (yes, the very same city whose identity has been hijacked by a certain celebrity politician, one who we shall not mention again here), and then eventually settling in amongst the puddles and monochromatic haze of Portland, Oregon. There were Iditarod-racing parents, wooden cabins tucked deep in the woods, and the sort of upbringing that skews the very notion of convention. But let us end that chapter of Portugal. The Man's lore and move forward.
---
Portland, Oregon - by-way-of Wasilla, Alaska - based band Portugal. The Man most recently released Evil Friends, their collaboration with multi-GRAMMY Award winning-producer Danger Mouse. The band's renowned live set has made them a festival staple, and they've performed at nearly every major festival including Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Earlier this year, the band teamed up with the Smithsonian Institute to release "Sumatran Tiger," an "endangered song" which fans were encouraged to share and spread to raise awareness of the endangered species of Sumatran Tigers.
---
Local Natives make soaring, sky-scraping harmonies, dreamy orchestral melodies, and throbbing tribal beats that bash their way into your soul. Theirs are songs you can dance to almost as well as you can swoon to them. Drawing a line from the vocal stylings of Crosby Stills Nash & Young and the Zombies through the more esoteric edges of post-punk and Afro-beat, this California five piece have communally crafted a brand of indie rock all their own. "Gorilla Manor, the debut album from L.A.'s Local Natives, features rustic and yearning vocals, three-part harmonies, clattering percussion, wiggly guitar leads, euphoric chanting, and a Talking Heads cover. ... The best comparison perhaps is that they're sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear." --Pitchfork
---
interview with Portugal. The Man
"Save me, I can't be saved" – opening line from Satanic Satanist
"…I don't believe." — closing line from Satanic Satanist
"These two lines are like bookends to the new album. They tie into the way my dad and other people escaped to Alaska in the 70s, and represent their proud independence and courage. The album's last line finishes the thought of the first line. It was Alaska. Everything we've gotten to be and everything we've gotten to go through, we've been lucky enough to have what we have."
– John Baldwin Gourley
"But it's the songs themselves that truly set this band apart." – Alternative Press
Within days of Alternative Press including Censored Colors on its list of 10 Essential Albums of 2008, the members of Portugal. The Man were trudging through the Boston snow to start work on their fourth release in four years, The Satanic Satanist. As John Baldwin Gourley, named the year's Best Vocalist in that same issue of AP, explains the pace at which his band has turned out any number of the decade's more inspired moments, "Honestly, I think we should be putting out more music. It keeps you thinking, keeps you growing and progressing. If you stop and let it sit for too long, I feel like you start to lose track of where you were going."
For 2008's Censored Colors, Portugal. The Man spent two weeks in Seattle with their friends in Kay Kay and the Weathered Underground making an album Gourley says he wrote in tribute to the music of a youth spent tuned to oldies radio as his parents drove around Alaska. One of his earliest musical memories, finding a tape of Abbey Road in a box of his parents' cassettes, resulted in Censored Colors' second side where all the songs are strung together in an epic suite.
For The Satanic Satanist, Gourley and his bandmates – Zachary Scott Carothers/bass, and Ryan Neighbors/keyboards, and the drummer for the album, Garrett Lunceford – flew to Boston's Camp Street Studios to work with Paul Q. Kolderie, whose previous clients include both the Pixies and Radiohead, with additional production help from Adam Taylor (The Lemonheads, The Dresdon Dolls) and Cornershop sitarist/keyboardist Anthony Saffery.
This was a big step for the band. From the time Gourley started the group in Wasilla, Alaska as an outlet for his growing fascination with tape loops and sampling – as captured on 2006's Waiter: "You Vultures!," through the soulful yet art-rocking swagger of 2007's Church Mouth, and then to the richly textured majesty of Censored Colors – the band had always recorded with friends.
But the group, now based in Portland, Oregon, was clearly ready for the next big step, Historically, the band waited until they actually entered the recording studio to begin writing music or lyrics; this time, they did some pre-production.
"Save me I can't be saved I'm a president son, I don't need no soul."
"I was terrified," Gourley confesses, with a laugh. "We've only worked with friends, you know? It's always been people we knew really well. And this time around, it was we were working with Paul, Anthony and Adam who have all been involved in very successful projects. So we wanted to do what they would have expected us to do rather than just throw something out there. And actually, it felt so much better doing it that way."
Gourley also did his best to tighten up the structure.
"I was really trying to go for the more Motown structure than anything," he says, "the really short, tight songs with three parts and that soul vibe that we've been trying to go for this whole time. It really took stripping things down to even get that sound. You know, 'Ain't No Sunshine' is the same riff for two minutes."
As bassist Carothers, who started the band with Gourley, admits with a laugh, "We always say we want to make a straight-up soul record. I think we've said that every single time before we've gone into the studio and it never totally comes out that way. But we were definitely listening to a lot of more rare soul and funk lately. And Adam and Anthony and Paul all had a big effect on that, because from the time we decided to go with them, they were sending us just tons of music over email."
"What a lovely day yeah we won the war, May have lost a million men but we got a million more."
"People Say," the lead-off track, finds Gourley speaking out against the human cost of war. On "Lovers in Love," the band works the groove like Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield in their blaxploitation days, while "Work All Day" could pass for ?uestlove slowing down the beat to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)."
The Satanic Satanist also finds them working more with loops and samples than they have since their 2006 debut.
"We played all the songs live to begin with," Gourley recalls, "then went back and tweaked it. But I've always loved loops and samples. I think it has such a cool vibe and such a specific sound that you can only get from sampling. You can't get those sounds from real drums. We just hadn't had the chance because we'd been touring so much and I guess Church Mouth needed to be that stripped-down record coming off of Waiter, when we realized that we couldn't do the samples live. And recording Censored Colors, was done with Kay Kay, so it didn't make sense to be messing with loops when we had so many real instruments lying around the place."
And, it's not just the beats that were sampled.
As Gourley tells it, "I would play some of the lead lines and Adam would go back through and chop 'em up. I'm really glad we're the way we are as a band, where we're not precious about things like that, because he spliced together some really cool lead lines that we wouldn't have thought of."
They also made use of the studio's vast array of classic keyboards, allowing Ryan Neighbors to play a more prominent role on this, his second album with the band.
"Ryan brought a lot to the recording this time around," says Gourley. "He and Anthony just went for it. They pretty much used every instrument that ever had keys."
For Neighbors, as much of a departure as this album represents, it still feels like it's part of a continuum with everything they've ever done.
The songs all just kind of work together," Neighbors says. "They all have the Portugal sound even though the ideas themselves can be drastically different. It's all still Portuguese."
"We took that trip out in '87, yeah found that place where we don't fear heaven."
"The whole record is between 1987 and 1993 of my life growing up where we moved around a lot," he says. "It felt like we were constantly escaping something and constantly running. And it made me think a lot about my mom and dad leaving New York and coming to Alaska in the '70s. They just went out to the woods and lived in cabins, away from everything."
"When I lived in the woods, everything was alright."
Alaska's been a constant source of inspiration on Gourley's music.
"It was just amazing," he says of his growing up. "I think it really spawned a lot of thought and a lot of imagination. We had this video store down the street from my house and every animated film that came into that place would be put in the family section, no matter what it was. So I would watch Fantastic Planet and Light Years and Fire and Ice and Wizards, all these crazy, intense stories that I can look back on now and know that they have made me the person I am. All these sci-fi movies that I watched in combination with the cold and the dark and the snow and isolation really painted some cool pictures and cool memories."
show less
By now, the peripatetic trail etched out by Portugal. The Man is well documented. The band's nomadic path snakes down the Cascades, starting first in Wasilla, Alaska (yes, the very same city whose identity has been hijacked by a certain celebrity politician, one who we shall not mention again here), and then eventually settling in amongst the puddles and monochromatic haze of Portland, Oregon. There were Iditarod-racing parents, wooden cabins tucked deep in the woods, and the sort of upbringing that skews the very notion of convention. But let us end that chapter of Portugal. The Man's lore and move forward.
---
Portland, Oregon - by-way-of Wasilla, Alaska - based band Portugal. The Man most recently released Evil Friends, their collaboration with multi-GRAMMY Award winning-producer Danger Mouse. The band's renowned live set has made them a festival staple, and they've performed at nearly every major festival including Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Earlier this year, the band teamed up with the Smithsonian Institute to release "Sumatran Tiger," an "endangered song" which fans were encouraged to share and spread to raise awareness of the endangered species of Sumatran Tigers.
---
Local Natives make soaring, sky-scraping harmonies, dreamy orchestral melodies, and throbbing tribal beats that bash their way into your soul. Theirs are songs you can dance to almost as well as you can swoon to them. Drawing a line from the vocal stylings of Crosby Stills Nash & Young and the Zombies through the more esoteric edges of post-punk and Afro-beat, this California five piece have communally crafted a brand of indie rock all their own. "Gorilla Manor, the debut album from L.A.'s Local Natives, features rustic and yearning vocals, three-part harmonies, clattering percussion, wiggly guitar leads, euphoric chanting, and a Talking Heads cover. ... The best comparison perhaps is that they're sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear." --Pitchfork
---
interview with Portugal. The Man
"Save me, I can't be saved" – opening line from Satanic Satanist
"…I don't believe." — closing line from Satanic Satanist
"These two lines are like bookends to the new album. They tie into the way my dad and other people escaped to Alaska in the 70s, and represent their proud independence and courage. The album's last line finishes the thought of the first line. It was Alaska. Everything we've gotten to be and everything we've gotten to go through, we've been lucky enough to have what we have."
– John Baldwin Gourley
"But it's the songs themselves that truly set this band apart." – Alternative Press
Within days of Alternative Press including Censored Colors on its list of 10 Essential Albums of 2008, the members of Portugal. The Man were trudging through the Boston snow to start work on their fourth release in four years, The Satanic Satanist. As John Baldwin Gourley, named the year's Best Vocalist in that same issue of AP, explains the pace at which his band has turned out any number of the decade's more inspired moments, "Honestly, I think we should be putting out more music. It keeps you thinking, keeps you growing and progressing. If you stop and let it sit for too long, I feel like you start to lose track of where you were going."
For 2008's Censored Colors, Portugal. The Man spent two weeks in Seattle with their friends in Kay Kay and the Weathered Underground making an album Gourley says he wrote in tribute to the music of a youth spent tuned to oldies radio as his parents drove around Alaska. One of his earliest musical memories, finding a tape of Abbey Road in a box of his parents' cassettes, resulted in Censored Colors' second side where all the songs are strung together in an epic suite.
For The Satanic Satanist, Gourley and his bandmates – Zachary Scott Carothers/bass, and Ryan Neighbors/keyboards, and the drummer for the album, Garrett Lunceford – flew to Boston's Camp Street Studios to work with Paul Q. Kolderie, whose previous clients include both the Pixies and Radiohead, with additional production help from Adam Taylor (The Lemonheads, The Dresdon Dolls) and Cornershop sitarist/keyboardist Anthony Saffery.
This was a big step for the band. From the time Gourley started the group in Wasilla, Alaska as an outlet for his growing fascination with tape loops and sampling – as captured on 2006's Waiter: "You Vultures!," through the soulful yet art-rocking swagger of 2007's Church Mouth, and then to the richly textured majesty of Censored Colors – the band had always recorded with friends.
But the group, now based in Portland, Oregon, was clearly ready for the next big step, Historically, the band waited until they actually entered the recording studio to begin writing music or lyrics; this time, they did some pre-production.
"Save me I can't be saved I'm a president son, I don't need no soul."
"I was terrified," Gourley confesses, with a laugh. "We've only worked with friends, you know? It's always been people we knew really well. And this time around, it was we were working with Paul, Anthony and Adam who have all been involved in very successful projects. So we wanted to do what they would have expected us to do rather than just throw something out there. And actually, it felt so much better doing it that way."
Gourley also did his best to tighten up the structure.
"I was really trying to go for the more Motown structure than anything," he says, "the really short, tight songs with three parts and that soul vibe that we've been trying to go for this whole time. It really took stripping things down to even get that sound. You know, 'Ain't No Sunshine' is the same riff for two minutes."
As bassist Carothers, who started the band with Gourley, admits with a laugh, "We always say we want to make a straight-up soul record. I think we've said that every single time before we've gone into the studio and it never totally comes out that way. But we were definitely listening to a lot of more rare soul and funk lately. And Adam and Anthony and Paul all had a big effect on that, because from the time we decided to go with them, they were sending us just tons of music over email."
"What a lovely day yeah we won the war, May have lost a million men but we got a million more."
"People Say," the lead-off track, finds Gourley speaking out against the human cost of war. On "Lovers in Love," the band works the groove like Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield in their blaxploitation days, while "Work All Day" could pass for ?uestlove slowing down the beat to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)."
The Satanic Satanist also finds them working more with loops and samples than they have since their 2006 debut.
"We played all the songs live to begin with," Gourley recalls, "then went back and tweaked it. But I've always loved loops and samples. I think it has such a cool vibe and such a specific sound that you can only get from sampling. You can't get those sounds from real drums. We just hadn't had the chance because we'd been touring so much and I guess Church Mouth needed to be that stripped-down record coming off of Waiter, when we realized that we couldn't do the samples live. And recording Censored Colors, was done with Kay Kay, so it didn't make sense to be messing with loops when we had so many real instruments lying around the place."
And, it's not just the beats that were sampled.
As Gourley tells it, "I would play some of the lead lines and Adam would go back through and chop 'em up. I'm really glad we're the way we are as a band, where we're not precious about things like that, because he spliced together some really cool lead lines that we wouldn't have thought of."
They also made use of the studio's vast array of classic keyboards, allowing Ryan Neighbors to play a more prominent role on this, his second album with the band.
"Ryan brought a lot to the recording this time around," says Gourley. "He and Anthony just went for it. They pretty much used every instrument that ever had keys."
For Neighbors, as much of a departure as this album represents, it still feels like it's part of a continuum with everything they've ever done.
The songs all just kind of work together," Neighbors says. "They all have the Portugal sound even though the ideas themselves can be drastically different. It's all still Portuguese."
"We took that trip out in '87, yeah found that place where we don't fear heaven."
"The whole record is between 1987 and 1993 of my life growing up where we moved around a lot," he says. "It felt like we were constantly escaping something and constantly running. And it made me think a lot about my mom and dad leaving New York and coming to Alaska in the '70s. They just went out to the woods and lived in cabins, away from everything."
"When I lived in the woods, everything was alright."
Alaska's been a constant source of inspiration on Gourley's music.
"It was just amazing," he says of his growing up. "I think it really spawned a lot of thought and a lot of imagination. We had this video store down the street from my house and every animated film that came into that place would be put in the family section, no matter what it was. So I would watch Fantastic Planet and Light Years and Fire and Ice and Wizards, all these crazy, intense stories that I can look back on now and know that they have made me the person I am. All these sci-fi movies that I watched in combination with the cold and the dark and the snow and isolation really painted some cool pictures and cool memories."
Portugal. The Man with Local Natives
By now, the peripatetic trail etched out by Portugal. The Man is well documented. The band's nomadic path snakes down the Cascades, starting first in Wasilla, Alaska (yes, the very same city whose identity has been hijacked by a certain celebrity politician, one who we shall not mention again here), and then eventually settling in amongst the puddles and monochromatic haze of Portland, Oregon. There were Iditarod-racing parents, wooden cabins tucked deep in the woods, and the sort of upbringing that skews the very notion of convention. But let us end that chapter of Portugal. The Man's lore and move forward.
---
Portland, Oregon - by-way-of Wasilla, Alaska - based band Portugal. The Man most recently released Evil Friends, their collaboration with multi-GRAMMY Award winning-producer Danger Mouse. The band's renowned live set has made them a festival staple, and they've performed at nearly every major festival including Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Earlier this year, the band teamed up with the Smithsonian Institute to release "Sumatran Tiger," an "endangered song" which fans were encouraged to share and spread to raise awareness of the endangered species of Sumatran Tigers.
---
Local Natives make soaring, sky-scraping harmonies, dreamy orchestral melodies, and throbbing tribal beats that bash their way into your soul. Theirs are songs you can dance to almost as well as you can swoon to them. Drawing a line from the vocal stylings of Crosby Stills Nash & Young and the Zombies through the more esoteric edges of post-punk and Afro-beat, this California five piece have communally crafted a brand of indie rock all their own. "Gorilla Manor, the debut album from L.A.'s Local Natives, features rustic and yearning vocals, three-part harmonies, clattering percussion, wiggly guitar leads, euphoric chanting, and a Talking Heads cover. ... The best comparison perhaps is that they're sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear." --Pitchfork
---
interview with Portugal. The Man
"Save me, I can't be saved" – opening line from Satanic Satanist
"…I don't believe." — closing line from Satanic Satanist
"These two lines are like bookends to the new album. They tie into the way my dad and other people escaped to Alaska in the 70s, and represent their proud independence and courage. The album's last line finishes the thought of the first line. It was Alaska. Everything we've gotten to be and everything we've gotten to go through, we've been lucky enough to have what we have."
– John Baldwin Gourley
"But it's the songs themselves that truly set this band apart." – Alternative Press
Within days of Alternative Press including Censored Colors on its list of 10 Essential Albums of 2008, the members of Portugal. The Man were trudging through the Boston snow to start work on their fourth release in four years, The Satanic Satanist. As John Baldwin Gourley, named the year's Best Vocalist in that same issue of AP, explains the pace at which his band has turned out any number of the decade's more inspired moments, "Honestly, I think we should be putting out more music. It keeps you thinking, keeps you growing and progressing. If you stop and let it sit for too long, I feel like you start to lose track of where you were going."
For 2008's Censored Colors, Portugal. The Man spent two weeks in Seattle with their friends in Kay Kay and the Weathered Underground making an album Gourley says he wrote in tribute to the music of a youth spent tuned to oldies radio as his parents drove around Alaska. One of his earliest musical memories, finding a tape of Abbey Road in a box of his parents' cassettes, resulted in Censored Colors' second side where all the songs are strung together in an epic suite.
For The Satanic Satanist, Gourley and his bandmates – Zachary Scott Carothers/bass, and Ryan Neighbors/keyboards, and the drummer for the album, Garrett Lunceford – flew to Boston's Camp Street Studios to work with Paul Q. Kolderie, whose previous clients include both the Pixies and Radiohead, with additional production help from Adam Taylor (The Lemonheads, The Dresdon Dolls) and Cornershop sitarist/keyboardist Anthony Saffery.
This was a big step for the band. From the time Gourley started the group in Wasilla, Alaska as an outlet for his growing fascination with tape loops and sampling – as captured on 2006's Waiter: "You Vultures!," through the soulful yet art-rocking swagger of 2007's Church Mouth, and then to the richly textured majesty of Censored Colors – the band had always recorded with friends.
But the group, now based in Portland, Oregon, was clearly ready for the next big step, Historically, the band waited until they actually entered the recording studio to begin writing music or lyrics; this time, they did some pre-production.
"Save me I can't be saved I'm a president son, I don't need no soul."
"I was terrified," Gourley confesses, with a laugh. "We've only worked with friends, you know? It's always been people we knew really well. And this time around, it was we were working with Paul, Anthony and Adam who have all been involved in very successful projects. So we wanted to do what they would have expected us to do rather than just throw something out there. And actually, it felt so much better doing it that way."
Gourley also did his best to tighten up the structure.
"I was really trying to go for the more Motown structure than anything," he says, "the really short, tight songs with three parts and that soul vibe that we've been trying to go for this whole time. It really took stripping things down to even get that sound. You know, 'Ain't No Sunshine' is the same riff for two minutes."
As bassist Carothers, who started the band with Gourley, admits with a laugh, "We always say we want to make a straight-up soul record. I think we've said that every single time before we've gone into the studio and it never totally comes out that way. But we were definitely listening to a lot of more rare soul and funk lately. And Adam and Anthony and Paul all had a big effect on that, because from the time we decided to go with them, they were sending us just tons of music over email."
"What a lovely day yeah we won the war, May have lost a million men but we got a million more."
"People Say," the lead-off track, finds Gourley speaking out against the human cost of war. On "Lovers in Love," the band works the groove like Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield in their blaxploitation days, while "Work All Day" could pass for ?uestlove slowing down the beat to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)."
The Satanic Satanist also finds them working more with loops and samples than they have since their 2006 debut.
"We played all the songs live to begin with," Gourley recalls, "then went back and tweaked it. But I've always loved loops and samples. I think it has such a cool vibe and such a specific sound that you can only get from sampling. You can't get those sounds from real drums. We just hadn't had the chance because we'd been touring so much and I guess Church Mouth needed to be that stripped-down record coming off of Waiter, when we realized that we couldn't do the samples live. And recording Censored Colors, was done with Kay Kay, so it didn't make sense to be messing with loops when we had so many real instruments lying around the place."
And, it's not just the beats that were sampled.
As Gourley tells it, "I would play some of the lead lines and Adam would go back through and chop 'em up. I'm really glad we're the way we are as a band, where we're not precious about things like that, because he spliced together some really cool lead lines that we wouldn't have thought of."
They also made use of the studio's vast array of classic keyboards, allowing Ryan Neighbors to play a more prominent role on this, his second album with the band.
"Ryan brought a lot to the recording this time around," says Gourley. "He and Anthony just went for it. They pretty much used every instrument that ever had keys."
For Neighbors, as much of a departure as this album represents, it still feels like it's part of a continuum with everything they've ever done.
The songs all just kind of work together," Neighbors says. "They all have the Portugal sound even though the ideas themselves can be drastically different. It's all still Portuguese."
"We took that trip out in '87, yeah found that place where we don't fear heaven."
"The whole record is between 1987 and 1993 of my life growing up where we moved around a lot," he says. "It felt like we were constantly escaping something and constantly running. And it made me think a lot about my mom and dad leaving New York and coming to Alaska in the '70s. They just went out to the woods and lived in cabins, away from everything."
"When I lived in the woods, everything was alright."
Alaska's been a constant source of inspiration on Gourley's music.
"It was just amazing," he says of his growing up. "I think it really spawned a lot of thought and a lot of imagination. We had this video store down the street from my house and every animated film that came into that place would be put in the family section, no matter what it was. So I would watch Fantastic Planet and Light Years and Fire and Ice and Wizards, all these crazy, intense stories that I can look back on now and know that they have made me the person I am. All these sci-fi movies that I watched in combination with the cold and the dark and the snow and isolation really painted some cool pictures and cool memories."
read more
By now, the peripatetic trail etched out by Portugal. The Man is well documented. The band's nomadic path snakes down the Cascades, starting first in Wasilla, Alaska (yes, the very same city whose identity has been hijacked by a certain celebrity politician, one who we shall not mention again here), and then eventually settling in amongst the puddles and monochromatic haze of Portland, Oregon. There were Iditarod-racing parents, wooden cabins tucked deep in the woods, and the sort of upbringing that skews the very notion of convention. But let us end that chapter of Portugal. The Man's lore and move forward.
---
Portland, Oregon - by-way-of Wasilla, Alaska - based band Portugal. The Man most recently released Evil Friends, their collaboration with multi-GRAMMY Award winning-producer Danger Mouse. The band's renowned live set has made them a festival staple, and they've performed at nearly every major festival including Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Earlier this year, the band teamed up with the Smithsonian Institute to release "Sumatran Tiger," an "endangered song" which fans were encouraged to share and spread to raise awareness of the endangered species of Sumatran Tigers.
---
Local Natives make soaring, sky-scraping harmonies, dreamy orchestral melodies, and throbbing tribal beats that bash their way into your soul. Theirs are songs you can dance to almost as well as you can swoon to them. Drawing a line from the vocal stylings of Crosby Stills Nash & Young and the Zombies through the more esoteric edges of post-punk and Afro-beat, this California five piece have communally crafted a brand of indie rock all their own. "Gorilla Manor, the debut album from L.A.'s Local Natives, features rustic and yearning vocals, three-part harmonies, clattering percussion, wiggly guitar leads, euphoric chanting, and a Talking Heads cover. ... The best comparison perhaps is that they're sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear." --Pitchfork
---
interview with Portugal. The Man
"Save me, I can't be saved" – opening line from Satanic Satanist
"…I don't believe." — closing line from Satanic Satanist
"These two lines are like bookends to the new album. They tie into the way my dad and other people escaped to Alaska in the 70s, and represent their proud independence and courage. The album's last line finishes the thought of the first line. It was Alaska. Everything we've gotten to be and everything we've gotten to go through, we've been lucky enough to have what we have."
– John Baldwin Gourley
"But it's the songs themselves that truly set this band apart." – Alternative Press
Within days of Alternative Press including Censored Colors on its list of 10 Essential Albums of 2008, the members of Portugal. The Man were trudging through the Boston snow to start work on their fourth release in four years, The Satanic Satanist. As John Baldwin Gourley, named the year's Best Vocalist in that same issue of AP, explains the pace at which his band has turned out any number of the decade's more inspired moments, "Honestly, I think we should be putting out more music. It keeps you thinking, keeps you growing and progressing. If you stop and let it sit for too long, I feel like you start to lose track of where you were going."
For 2008's Censored Colors, Portugal. The Man spent two weeks in Seattle with their friends in Kay Kay and the Weathered Underground making an album Gourley says he wrote in tribute to the music of a youth spent tuned to oldies radio as his parents drove around Alaska. One of his earliest musical memories, finding a tape of Abbey Road in a box of his parents' cassettes, resulted in Censored Colors' second side where all the songs are strung together in an epic suite.
For The Satanic Satanist, Gourley and his bandmates – Zachary Scott Carothers/bass, and Ryan Neighbors/keyboards, and the drummer for the album, Garrett Lunceford – flew to Boston's Camp Street Studios to work with Paul Q. Kolderie, whose previous clients include both the Pixies and Radiohead, with additional production help from Adam Taylor (The Lemonheads, The Dresdon Dolls) and Cornershop sitarist/keyboardist Anthony Saffery.
This was a big step for the band. From the time Gourley started the group in Wasilla, Alaska as an outlet for his growing fascination with tape loops and sampling – as captured on 2006's Waiter: "You Vultures!," through the soulful yet art-rocking swagger of 2007's Church Mouth, and then to the richly textured majesty of Censored Colors – the band had always recorded with friends.
But the group, now based in Portland, Oregon, was clearly ready for the next big step, Historically, the band waited until they actually entered the recording studio to begin writing music or lyrics; this time, they did some pre-production.
"Save me I can't be saved I'm a president son, I don't need no soul."
"I was terrified," Gourley confesses, with a laugh. "We've only worked with friends, you know? It's always been people we knew really well. And this time around, it was we were working with Paul, Anthony and Adam who have all been involved in very successful projects. So we wanted to do what they would have expected us to do rather than just throw something out there. And actually, it felt so much better doing it that way."
Gourley also did his best to tighten up the structure.
"I was really trying to go for the more Motown structure than anything," he says, "the really short, tight songs with three parts and that soul vibe that we've been trying to go for this whole time. It really took stripping things down to even get that sound. You know, 'Ain't No Sunshine' is the same riff for two minutes."
As bassist Carothers, who started the band with Gourley, admits with a laugh, "We always say we want to make a straight-up soul record. I think we've said that every single time before we've gone into the studio and it never totally comes out that way. But we were definitely listening to a lot of more rare soul and funk lately. And Adam and Anthony and Paul all had a big effect on that, because from the time we decided to go with them, they were sending us just tons of music over email."
"What a lovely day yeah we won the war, May have lost a million men but we got a million more."
"People Say," the lead-off track, finds Gourley speaking out against the human cost of war. On "Lovers in Love," the band works the groove like Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield in their blaxploitation days, while "Work All Day" could pass for ?uestlove slowing down the beat to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)."
The Satanic Satanist also finds them working more with loops and samples than they have since their 2006 debut.
"We played all the songs live to begin with," Gourley recalls, "then went back and tweaked it. But I've always loved loops and samples. I think it has such a cool vibe and such a specific sound that you can only get from sampling. You can't get those sounds from real drums. We just hadn't had the chance because we'd been touring so much and I guess Church Mouth needed to be that stripped-down record coming off of Waiter, when we realized that we couldn't do the samples live. And recording Censored Colors, was done with Kay Kay, so it didn't make sense to be messing with loops when we had so many real instruments lying around the place."
And, it's not just the beats that were sampled.
As Gourley tells it, "I would play some of the lead lines and Adam would go back through and chop 'em up. I'm really glad we're the way we are as a band, where we're not precious about things like that, because he spliced together some really cool lead lines that we wouldn't have thought of."
They also made use of the studio's vast array of classic keyboards, allowing Ryan Neighbors to play a more prominent role on this, his second album with the band.
"Ryan brought a lot to the recording this time around," says Gourley. "He and Anthony just went for it. They pretty much used every instrument that ever had keys."
For Neighbors, as much of a departure as this album represents, it still feels like it's part of a continuum with everything they've ever done.
The songs all just kind of work together," Neighbors says. "They all have the Portugal sound even though the ideas themselves can be drastically different. It's all still Portuguese."
"We took that trip out in '87, yeah found that place where we don't fear heaven."
"The whole record is between 1987 and 1993 of my life growing up where we moved around a lot," he says. "It felt like we were constantly escaping something and constantly running. And it made me think a lot about my mom and dad leaving New York and coming to Alaska in the '70s. They just went out to the woods and lived in cabins, away from everything."
"When I lived in the woods, everything was alright."
Alaska's been a constant source of inspiration on Gourley's music.
"It was just amazing," he says of his growing up. "I think it really spawned a lot of thought and a lot of imagination. We had this video store down the street from my house and every animated film that came into that place would be put in the family section, no matter what it was. So I would watch Fantastic Planet and Light Years and Fire and Ice and Wizards, all these crazy, intense stories that I can look back on now and know that they have made me the person I am. All these sci-fi movies that I watched in combination with the cold and the dark and the snow and isolation really painted some cool pictures and cool memories."
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