Shish. Portugal. The Man

In 2017 'Feel It Still' became a bigger hit than anyone in and around Portugal. The Man could ever have imagined. Until that moment the band was an alternative rock band, originally from Alaska but for well over decade operating from Portland, Oregon. It had a standing of the kind that people like me with a more than average interest in indie and alternative rock had picked up the name. I did not own an album (and still do not).

That 'Feel It Still' is sort of accident, can be found on the band's latest album, Shish. The album is named after the town of Shishmaref, Alaska on an island to the north of the Bering Strait. Shish is an album as erratic as I imagine the weather to be in Shishmaref, where four seasons in one day seems a distinct possibility to me.

What Portugal. The Man presents on this album, goes in all sorts of directions. I hear attempts to follow up on 'Feel It Still', something like hardcore, alternative rock and a lot in between these three. Although Shish drives off the road with 'Pittman Ralliers' as far as I'm concerned, the rest delivers in the ways the singles that preceded the album promised. Somewhere between a dreamstate and loud, alternative rock, if not mixing the two like in 'Knik'

In the past two years all members of the band, including founding member and bassist Zach Carothers, have left the band, leaving singer and multi-instrumentalist John Gourley and his wife Zoe Manville on backing vocals as the sole members. They tour now with hired hands only. Now, it is a good question whether that would have mattered to how Shish is sounding, fact will be that Gourley no longer had to listen to anybody else. The result is an eclectic album that takes the listener up and down, left and right, inside out and back again.

It also makes Shish an album that I have to get used to. I'm hearing so much that it is impossible to keep up, while at the same time I do hear a consistent quality that keeps me on my toes for what is to come next. There's simply no predicting, certainly not in first listening session but even several times later, some songs still come as a total surprise.

That is where I'm leaving you with the album, so you can go on this adventure yourself. Just brace yourself and let yourself be carried away by Portugal. The Man. It's certainly worth it.

Wout de Natris - van der Borght

 

You can listen to and order Shish here:

https://portugaltheman.bandcamp.com/album/shish