Portugal. The Man interview

 
Bobby Townsend talks to Portugal. The Man's Zachary Scott Carothers about the band's upcoming appearances at Australia's St Jerome's Laneway Festival:

"I'm just outside of Paris and I'm feeling a little sick. I took a bite of the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life today. We didn't know what we were ordering. It was intestines stuffed with other intestines. I've eaten some really nasty food in my life, just to try things. But this was by far the worst."

Portugal. The Man's Zachary Scott Carothers might be feeling a bit rough in the gut department, but it isn't tempering his high spirits at the fact that he and his three bandmates are soon to embark on their first ever jaunt to Australia. "We're really looking forward to it. I have some family in Perth but none of the band have ever been there. I've heard it's a really nice place. Everybody that I've talked to in other bands says it's really nice. It's known to have a really good rock n roll scene"

And the reason the Portland band are on their way over to Aus is because they are set to play at this summer's Laneway Festival. While they are looking forward to the opportunity to win new fans with their dreamy brand of psych-rock, don't expect to see them down the front checking out all of the other acts on the bill. It turns out that the four dudes who make up Portugal. The Man are pretty much the hardest working fellows around. "The Laneway line-up is rad but I actually don't know if we'll get to see anybody. One of the bummers about this job is that a lot of the times we don't get to see any bands because we are doing press and just really busy all day. It happens at all festivals." Not that Zach is especially concerned about this. He has other priorities on his debut trip to Australia. "When it comes to going to a country for the first time, I'm more excited about seeing the country, eating the food and drinking the drinks more than seeing other acts because I can do that in places that I've been before. To be honest I'm more interested in seeing whatever of Australia I can."

The band will arrive in Aus with six albums under their belts. Having been around for the same number of years, that's a pretty prolific turnaround, which brings us back to the hardest-working-band-in-music thing. "It's something we set out to do," he explains when talk turns to their album-a-year output. "We've got a very strong work ethic. We're not going to rush it. If a record isn't done, we'll wait until it's finished but we never really take days off. A lot of bands take a really long time with records but we love playing music. It's our hobby, it's our job, it's our passion, it's our career. It's really all we do. We're always doing something, whether we're on tour, rehearing or writing new music. We take advantage of the position that we're in but we definitely don't take it for granted. We know that it takes hard work to do this."

So, having logged over 800 shows and written, recorded and released an album every year since they started out, do Portugal. The Man ever have just straight-up time off? "Definitely not," Zach laughs. "Except for Christmas Day. I know that I don't have to do anything band-related on Christmas Day. Besides that, we're always doing something. There's never a week where we can turn off our cell phones and not answer our emails. We're pretty much on call 24 hours a day. Which is fine. There is so much more to playing in a band than just the music. There's artwork, videos, photos, blogs, video updates. There are so many things you can do to make it better. We really want to do this for our whole lives so we try to put ourselves in the mind-state that, no matter what time it is, we're always thinking 'what can I do right now that will take ten minutes that will help our careers?' We like to have fun and we do like to relax and, honestly, I would like a vacation every now and again, but most of the time, our job is fun. It's playing music, It's what we've wanted to do our whole lives so we work hard at it."

Portugal. The Man's new album, In The Mountain In The Cloud, is their first on a major label. Considering their DIY, homegrown ethic, one wonders whether it was a tough decision to sign with Atlantic. "Yeah. It was a hard decision.  Major labels have been contacting us since we first started six years ago but we always said that we wanted to build it our own way. We had an idea of where we wanted the band to go. We wanted to start out doing everything ourselves and our way. We had some great help and great management - I consider our manager as family - but when we released a record and there was only the four band members plus our manager, booking agent and publicist working all day every day... you need more help if you want to get to the next level."

While it was clear that the band were ready for the clout of Atlantic behind them, it was still something that took serious consideration. "We took our time with it. We talked to them almost every day for about nine months before we signed with them. They really made us feel at home from the very beginning. Obviously we were a little sceptical and very scared because there is a lot to live up to on a label like that. They have this legendary roster: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin... and then us! We put a lot of pressure on ourselves but, when it came down to it after hanging out at the offices and talking to everybody, they are just really big music fans and they are smart and cool. I'm glad that we did it. It's not like we're some band that has played 20 shows and a label has picked us up and crafted us into what they want us to be. We ask them for advice but they never make us change anything. All they do is help. They like us for what we've done and what we do."

As anyone who checks Portugal. The Man out at the 2012 St Jerome's Laneway Festival is sure to discover, they are indeed a hugely likable band.

Interview By Bobby Townsend

Yacht - Shangri-La

The fifth album from Portland, Oregon duo Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans is their second on the DFA label and, get this, deals with the idea of “paradise being a kinetic potential, a latency within us that has been eaten away by time.” Wow. So, Shangri-La is a concept album then, all about utopia in the face of dystopia. The world is turning to shit but it's okay because we're all going to party in a higher place. Or something.“The earth is on fire/ We don't have no daughter/ Let the motherfucker burn,” sings Evans.

Sonically, the record is a catchy clash of disco, punk, pop and electro, presumably intended to soundtrack this future utopia. Strangely then, it is actually a slower track that is most interesting. On Love in the Dark Evans nonchalantly informs us "I love you like a small-town cop/ Yeah, I wanna smash your face in with a rock." However, this intriguingly threatening moment also highlights the problem with Shangri-La. Namely, when Yacht are telling us not to “worry about God up above/ We're gonna live life in love,” it's hard to know how genuine the sentiment is because the delivery on the album generally appears to be sneeringly ironic.

So it's a relief that the melodic pop of the closing title-track brings things to a sweet end with the rather lovely and seemingly heartfelt idea that heaven is wherever you want it to be. If they'd told us that at the beginning of the album, we could have just had fun dancing to their well-crafted tunes rather than wading through the kind of scenester space-age psychobabble that would make Nathan Barley blush.

Review by Bobby Townsend

Night Surgeon - Day For Night

Jonjon gives his opinion on the offering from Portland's electro duo, Night Surgeon:

I love electro pop but I can’t recommend Night Surgeon. I’m not sure when bands and producers decided the best sound was late 1980s, early 1990s videogame sound effects but it was sometime from 2004 onwards. Night Surgeon fit this mould. There are lots of beeps and dreamy synths but there’s no boundary-pushing on this album and barely any soul. It all sounds perfunctory. The best I can say is that they sound like Duran Duran circa 1987-89 (the early wilderness years).

There are two tracks where Night Surgeon seem excited and these are the highlights; Roman Error and the next track on the album, Brick Moon. In all fairness these should get them some notice, Brick Moon seems ripe for a remix and Roman Error as a standalone track. These arrive just before the middle of the album and are the only memorable moments. The final track Let Go brings some spark back but it isn’t original – it could be interchanged with any mainstream pop rock album from the last 13 years.

The rest of the album... well, it isn’t so great. It isn’t unlistenable, it’s just dreary. It’s electro pop with some occasional veering towards pop rock. Some of the tracks sound as if the “electro” was an afterthought. On a positive note the vocalist is good, although as with the songs there isn’t much variation to either style or the range he sings in.

There is nothing wrong with this album but it doesn’t do enough to set Night Surgeon apart from the dozens of other bands and acts in their genre. Electro pop will be popular for a while yet but this band won’t be at the forefront with this. Despite their artificiality 3OH!3 and Ke$ha have more pop and dare I say it verve. Night Surgeon may not be artificial, they may be able to play their instruments but they have committed a cardinal pop sin – they’re a bit boring.

Review by Jonjon. Check out the below sampler of one of his highlights:

NIGHT SURGEON - DAY FOR NIGHT sampler - 01 BRICK MOON by nightsurgeonpdx

Blitzen Trapper - Destroyer of the Void

Written and produced by front man Eric Earley, Destroyer Of The Void is the fifth offering from the Portland band and sees the coming together of 60’s folk, 70’s country, 80’s prog and contemporary indie. To illustrate this, the title track leaps from polite, mid-tempo country-folk to piano balladry through stomping indie rock and vocal harmonies within its six minutes. It may show the increased ambition on this album, but it’s hardly the Bohemian Rhapsody it hopes to be.

The truth is that Blitzen Trapper are actually best when keeping things simple. The Man Who Would Speak True proves this, with just acoustic guitar and howling harmonica accompanying this old-fashioned country yarn. “On a drunken night with a stolen gun/I shot my lover as she made to run,” Earley sings, and it’s clear this man is a fine storyteller. “The judge sent me away/And they buried my Grace, yeah, the very next day.”

Heaven and Earth is similarly simple with piano and strings allowing the song to breathe and The Tree - a lovely folk duet with Alela Diane - further illustrates this is a band that doesn’t need to throw the kitchen sink at songs.

It seems a waste then - considering how much heart this record has - that the six-piece litters it with unmemorable and fairly bland outings like Love and Hate. Alluding to arena rock, there is nothing specifically wrong with it, but it demonstrates the unnecessarily overblown nature of much of Destroyer Of The Void. In this case, less would most certainly have been more.