MUSIC INTERVIEW: PORTUGAL. THE MAN

On The Rise: Art Rockers Climb ‘The Mountain In The Cloud’

By: Team Buzzine

July 21, 2011

Portland, Oregon-based art rockers Portugal. The Man can correctly be described as a band that have come in from the cold. Formed in Wasilla, Alaska (but please don’t ask them about Mrs. Palin), they moved down to the contiguous states to more easily be able to tour, and then (across the course of multiple albums on leading indie labels like Fearless and Equal Vision) built a significant following through their powerful live shows and increasingly complex and impactful music. That music now has a chance to connect with an even wider audience with the recording of their major label (Atlantic Records) debut album, In The Mountain In The Cloud, and Buzzine’s Stefan Goldby sat down with the boys in Austin, Texas to talk new challenges, new music, and (shhhh!) a secret wish to get used to five-star hotels…

Stefan Goldby: Let’s begin by talking for a moment about your last album The Satanic Satanist. You seemed to make a conscious effort to draw a line under what you had done previously and that album has both song structures which are varied in many ways and new people to work with as well. Is it fair to say that it marked a real changing point for P.TM?

Ryan Neighbors: I think it was just a good way to push ourselves to challenge ourselves a little bit more, and when we were actually working with real producers, we were all nervous so we practiced and learned the songs ahead of time because we didn’t want to embarrass ourselves, and I think it worked.

Zachary Carothers: It did because we went in there and we knew that we wanted to really focus all the structures on all the songs. We wanted to make shorter songs that got to the point, and kind of trimmed the fat off everything. It was a really awesome experience, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

John Gourley: The Satanic Satanist was our first real step into songwriting – our first real attempt at it. It’s fun to listen back to it. I think with Censored Colors before that, we recorded that album in two weeks, and it’s 14 songs, so we were writing a song a day, and I was forced to learn to play guitar and learn chords and really try to write songs in a short period. I would sit down and write a song at night, and then the next morning we would record it, and they would track while I was working on another song. We like writing songs. The Satanic Satanist was fun to make.

SG: Can you talk a little about your hit single “People Say” as a song?

JG: I wrote “People Say” when I was back in Alaska. My dad and I had been sitting around; we had been watching Pete Seeger documentaries, and he just mentioned Neil Young’s protest songs and Pete Seeger’s protest songs, and Woodie Guthrie…and he asked me to write one of those songs, and I said – as I always say – “All right, Dad. Sure thing. I’ll go write you a song.” And it was kind of a fluke – the lyrics were there, and all the pieces were there. It doesn’t really happen like that all the time, but it was just a quick thing. Just hangin’ with my dad, writing songs in my bedroom…

SG: Obviously that wasn’t quite scary enough for you, because now you’ve gone and raised the bar again with the new album. You were sitting in the studio with a producer (John Hill) who sat in the studio with some pretty great bands, so clearly you’re a band fueled by fear... [Laughs]

RN: There’s pressure with every new release to surpass the prior one, so we don’t want to take any steps back. That’s pretty much it, right?

JG: That’s right.

RN: We wanted to write some awesome songs that are way better than the other ones. We always want to keep moving forward, so we’re very happy with what that single has been doing and what it’s still doing right now. But we’re always looking ahead, for sure.

SG: Now you guys are based in Portland. Has that changed anything significantly for you guys as musicians? It’s a very different scene…

JG: We can tour out of Portland now. That’s nice. We started the band back in Alaska, and immediately after starting the band, writing some songs, we realized there was nowhere to play shows. We had no venues that we could really step into and start playing, so we pretty much just went straight to Portland and right out on tour.

ZC: Pretty quick, yeah.

SG: Jason: You’re being too quiet. What question can I ask you that you’ll answer?

Everyone: [Laughs]

Jason Sechrist: Drums…

ZC: It has to pertain to drums.

SG: Let’s talk about the drum sound on the new record. Is there anything specifically differ… I don’t know. I don’t want to leave you just sitting on the end the whole time…

JS: No, that’s fine.

SG: So I’m going to prod you at least once.

JG: If we can get a reaction from him, it would be I think, one of my favorite interview questions ever…

SG: Uh-oh.

JG: It was our first tour in Germany, and we were all terrified going over there – none of us spoke German – panicking because we didn’t realize everybody in Germany speaks eight languages – English being one of them. So we go into this radio interview and it’s our first radio interview, and everybody is being asked questions, and the DJ turns to Jason and he asks him the most in-depth question about the music industry and our label, and what it’s like writing songs and dealing with these people, and Jason’s response was…

JS: “…In terms of drums?”

JG: [Laughs] It was a pretty perfect response.

SG: So let’s talk about your new album in terms of drums… [laughs] No, seriously, what can you tell us about the new record?

JS: I think I can tell you that we tone-searched really well on this album; it’s got great synthesizer and key tones, and great guitar tones and reverbs, and drum tones as well.

RN: Just not bass tones. He left you [Zach] out.

JS: Sorry.

SG: That seems a little deliberate…

ZC: Yeah, what are you saying?

SG: Is it an acoustic record? Is that what you’re saying?

ZC: Tell him what you [Jason] think.

JS: It’s not an acoustic record, but I think it’s swell. I just wanted to use that word. It’s not so bad.

SG: OK, everyone: In slightly more general terms, what can we expect from the new record?

ZC: We put a lot more time into it than we ever have before. We recorded it in several different studios and at different periods of time. We’d go on a tour in-between and such, and that gave us a lot of time to listen to it and rethink everything. So we’re very proud of this new one. We’re excited for it to come out and for everybody to hear it and see what they think.

SG: Developing it over a longer period of time and going out on tour dates as you recorded, were you effectively A&R’ing the record yourself?

ZC: When we were in the middle of recording the new record, we did go out on tour and we tried out some of the new songs to see what people thought of them, and to just see how they felt live, because that’s sometimes a problem with us. We’ll record songs, and we write them in the studio, and then we have to learn them and play them live, and sometimes a song will be great on record but we’re not feeling it on the stage, so it was a nice opportunity to feel it out in the middle of the process, when we could go back and make changes. It was a pretty cool thing.

JS: It is kind of challenging to tackle it as a four-piece. You see all these bands that are getting upwards of nine people and you’re like, “Hey, sounds great. And you have nine people.”

SG: How do you know when a live show is a great show, between the four of you?

RN: It’s got to be a combination between crowd response and our personal playing. Sometimes the crowd likes it and we’re like, “We f***ed up, dude. That show sucked.” Sometimes the crowd doesn’t like it…or not that they don’t like it, but they’re not that engaged, and we think we played awesome.

JG: Sometimes they don’t like it. That dude yesterday thought we were bulls**t.

RN: Well, he wasn’t the crowd – he was a dude. The crowd loved it. [Laughs]

JG: Maybe we changed his mind.

ZC: …but sometimes we play a really bad show and we have a lot of fun, and the crowd likes it, and those are some of my favorites – when we get to make fun of each other afterwards for a long time about things we mess up on. But we’re doing better now. We’ve been playing for a long time, so it’s getting better. At the beginning, we played a lot of bad shows... [Laughs]

JS: So you shouldn’t call ‘em too many good shows because that would be a slacker move to make yourself feel better about yourself. They indeed happen, but between crowd response, your good times on stage and  all the good times at one time happening…

ZC: Lots of good times…

SG: So let’s end by talking about one of those good times: Over the course of the last five years, and all the touring and all the press, and all the Germans trying to confuse you, and whatever else, is there a particularly nice shiny rock star moment in the life of Portugal. The Man, so far?

JG: I think my favorite moment happened completely by accident. We played a show in Portugal for the first time, and we had never been over there; we had no way of gauging what the band would be over there, and we found out, once we got there, we get played on the radio. And we were playing a show with Peaches and Nine Inch Nails… there were 20,000 people at the show; it was a one-night thing, and it was crazy.

We showed up and they take us to this three-star hotel which, for us at the time, was like, “Oh my God! We got a three-star hotel!” There were no bugs on the bed… And I guess they had confused the booking, so they’re apologizing to us like crazy, and they had to take us over to this five-star Sheraton for five days in Portugal, and it was the most amazing time. It was such a crazy hotel. That being said, the music is the reason we do it. I think that’s pretty obvious to people that listen to the band or follow the band…

RN: …I just do it for the five-star hotels.

JG: Until we get those five-star hotels all the time…

ZC: …then it will be different…

JG: …Yeah, we’ll change. Money will change us.

RN: Got to invent a six-star hotel. They have them…

ZC: Last night, we got to see The Wu Tang Clan for the first time ever. I almost got to go up on stage, but there was a fight backstage, right when I got back there. I was going up on stage, and there was this crazy fight, and security just started freaking out on me and everybody else back there, so I bolted. But it was an awesome show; it was fun to see that.

SG: So you were that close to a new greatest rock star moment last night…

ZC: Almost had it. Story of my life.

JG: You should have jumped in on the fight. That would have been rock star.

Portugal. The Man’s new album, 'In The Mountin In The Cloud,‘ is out now on Atlantic Records.