On their recent visit to the UK, contactmusic caught up with the guys from Portugal. The Man and they recorded us a special acoustic version of 'So American' and 'All Your Light (Times Like These)'.
Portugal. The Man released thier phenominal album 'In The Mountain In The Cloud' in late November - their first for Atlantic Records, it was produced by by John Hill (Santigold, M.I.A.) and lead vocalist/guitarist John Gourley. In our recent interview with John, he told us of his unhappiness with the album until master mixer Andy Wallace (Nirvana, Jeff Buckley) added the missing element.
"When we gave Andy Wallace the record he had to dig through 8 months of our fuckups which amounted to about 130 tracks and he was asking me what I expected him to do with them all, and I told him 'just mix it, you're Andy Wallace, you've made some of our favourite records, from Slayer to Jeff Buckley and Nirvana, all of it is great' and he came back to me in the nicest way and said 'I will not pick the tracks for your record'.
I just wanted to fully trust the guy so when I asked him to pick the songs he said no because most bands would never make a move like that but after talk he eventually started to see what we were all about and how it was pretty different to the records he's worked on recently and eventually started to see what we were all about. "
Portugal. The Man will return to the UK in March when the band will be supporting The Black Keys on their UK tour.
Portugal. The Man is:
John Gourley: vocals, guitar
Zachary Scott Carothers: bass, vocals
Jason Sechrist: drums
Ryan Neighbors: keys, vocals
A special thanks to The Deaf Institute in Manchester.
Site - http://www.portugaltheman.com