Portugal Is The Name Of This Band, And It Is One Man

Portugal. The Man is one of those bands that you just never find out about if a friend doesn’t tell you about them. They’re not really for mass consumption, and their handlers seem to be aware enough of that fact to be concentrating less on broad marketing campaigns and more on just getting their music out there and letting it speak for itself. And in this case, we’re happy to help.

If I was in Portugal. The Man, I would probably be pretty sick of people comparing my band to The Mars Volta, as if there’s no more than two bands in the universe that make music that sounds like this. Then again, in all fairness to reviewers, it’d probably pretty hard to find another psychedelic, spastic latin jazz-metal band with an eccentric, wailing frontman fond of high registers.

Fortunately for everyone, Portugal. The Man brings a creativity entirely their own to the table.

I’ve been listening to their new album, Censored Colors for a few days now, and it’s become rather apparent that it’s going to take a long time for all of it to sink in and take hold. It’s a savory dish, with a million flavors to parse. My first impression was that it wasn’t quite as rockin’ as last year’s Church Mouth, but the more I listen to it, and the louder I turn it up, the more I doubt that initial assessment.

Here they are doing the third track, And I, live at Cedar Street Studios. After two minutes of vocal harmonies over acoustic guitars, the beat comes in, frontman John Baldwin Gourley starts to wail, and the band shows its teeth.

Now if you liked it, go back and listen again at twice the volume. Or turn up the album version below. See what I’m saying? Portugal. The Man is capable of some epic stuff, and I have a feeling this album will grow on me as time goes on.

Here’s another video, of Gourley performing track five, Created, in what appears to be an underground subway hallway. There’s a few more videos of the band performing live, in even stranger places, here.

Censored Colors is out now, and ordering a hard copy from their site gets you a link to download the MP3s. This policy was especially cool before the album was released, when you could essentially get a legitimate, totally legal MP3 advance when paying in advance for the CD. Not a bad idea.

Censored Colors
September 16, 2008
Approaching AIRballoons / Equal Vision Records

1. Lay Me Back Down
2. Colors
3. And I
4. Salt
5. Created
6. Out And In And In And Out
7. Intermission
8. New Orleans
9. Never Pleased
10. Sit Back And Dream
11. Hard Times
12. Our Times
13. All Mine
14. 1989
15. Our Way