Portland rock outfit Portugal. The Man are at the peak of their chameleonic career. They’ve just released their eighth studio album, Evil Friends, which is being touted as the group’s finest entry to date and seems destined to shoot them into the stratosphere of broader mainstream success. So, it’s no surprise bassist Zach Carothers sounds pretty elated when he picks up the phone.
“We’re out on tour in Buffalo, New York tonight,” the band’s co-founding member announces with excitement. “It’s a pretty good night, we’ve got an unbelievable amount of family on out. It’s our singer’s birthday today and he’s got a bunch of family out here and we do as well – it’s, uh, it’s ‘gonna be quite a party tonight,” he finishes with a big laugh.
One glance at the five-piece’s hectic career makes it quick to realise these moments have been few and far between. Releasing eight albums and five EPs since 2004, coupled with relentless non-stop touring, they’re one of the most consistently busy acts in the world. From the palpable excitement in Carothers’ voice, it seems the troupe are enjoying this rare occasion.
“We never stop working. Things have been a little slower with the new record, but we’re still busy. This one took quite a while to get everything together but we never really slowed down. We kind of stopped touring for a small amount of time just to get this record done.”
Despite there being an average of just a year’s time in between each record, Portugal. The Man’s sound has never remained stagnant. Experimentalism is at the band’s core and it has seen them cross the borders between heavier rock ‘n’ roll, delicate indie and their more avant-garde prog-rock. Continuing this trend of “always wanting to go some place different”, the quintet’s latest record sees them pursuing another previously unexplored terrain: pop.
“[Danger Mouse] amazing. That guy is so smart and so talented; it was just an unbelievably eye-opening experience working with him.”This time around, notably, the Portland band worked with acclaimed producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton), who had an undeniable influence on the evolution of their new sound. Aside from being one half of Gnarls Barkly, Danger Mouse has been the production mastermind behind the likes of Gorillaz, Beck, and most recently The Black Keys’ Grammy-winning record El Camino.
“He’s amazing. That guy is so smart and so talented; it was just an unbelievably eye-opening experience working with him,” says Carothers with clear admiration. “We learnt a lot about ourselves and we learnt so much about the music industry in general. He has such a unique perspective in band dynamics because he’s an artist himself and he’s been exactly where are.”
“He’s a good role model to look up to for someone who’s trying to write mainstream music but also keep their integrity and artistic intent in tact. He’s really quite amazing. He offered up so much good advice for us. It was really, really cool.”
From the hook-friendly vocals reminiscent of Foster The People to the pulsating synth-driven instrumentals akin to fellow Danger Mouse collaborators The Black Keys, each track on Evil Friends stands on its own as a catchy slice of psychedlic-inspired indie rock tailored for endless plays on the radio. The collaboration with Danger Mouse has effectively moulded Portugal. The Man into a more polished outfit and despite the possible comparisons that can be drawn, their own unique identity still remains intact.
“A lot of people will blame Danger Mouse for the ‘poppier’ sound. But we made a conscious decision – and we’ve been trying to do this for a long time – to make accessible music. We want to make pop music with substance but for a lot of people ‘pop’ and ‘mainstream’ have bad connotations these days, which I personally think is bullshit,” the bassist punctuates light-heartedly. “You know, David Bowie has I don’t know how many hits, but nobody has ever questioned his artistic integrity. That guy is unbelievable and that’s the kind of stuff we want to do and Bryan [Danger Mouse] definitely knows how to help with that.”
Besides a newly refined sound, there’s been another defining change in the Portugal camp since their last album. Last year lead singer John Gourley welcomed his first daughter Frances into the world, and she seems to have turned the band a little clucky.
“Oh man, [Frances] is my best friend. She’s out on tour with us, it’s so great to wake up every day on the bus and have her running around waking people up,” raves Carothers, funnily enough, with complete sincerity. “It’s just the cutest thing, she’s probably the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen. All of us just completely love her. She has a lot of uncles, I’ll tell you that much.”
Staying true to their impeccable work ethic, the band have already started to brainstorm for their next release amongst the craziness of babies, a brand new album and a global tour.
“Everyone is so good looking in Australia, it makes us feel terrible.”“We haven’t started recording but we have some ideas. Basically when we started working with Danger Mouse we were already nine songs into self-producing what we thought was going to be the new record. A lot of the songs are really good – we have two of them on this record, ‘Hip Hop Kids’ and ‘Sea Of Air’, which we did on our own in El Paso, Texas. But there’s still a lot of really good stuff there so I imagine we’re either going to release that as a sessions album or just take a lot of our favourite ideas out of there for new material.”
In the mean time, thankfully Portugal. The Man are wasting no time to share off their biggest album to date with Australian crowds – in fact, we’ll be the first international audience to hear Evil Friends live in action. Next month they touch down for Splendour in the Grass and even though it has only been a year since their last visit in 2012 for St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival, according to Carothers the band “cannot wait to get back”.
“We hardly got any time at all to hang out last time which was terrible because we love, love Australia,” he says earnestly with heavy emphasis. “We didn’t get to go out of the city like we wanted to. I love experiencing small towns, so I wanted to go rent a house in small fishing village, or get out in the woods in the middle of nowhere and just hang out for a week.”
“It’s such a beautiful place. Beautiful people, too. Everyone is so good looking in Australia, it makes us feel terrible. This time around we’ll have a bit more time up our sleeves so we’ll be able to adventure a bit more. We’re already counting down.”
Evil Friends is out now through Atlantic.
