“It actually resolved itself well, but I’ll start from the beginning,” Neighbors recounts. “We were at Lollapolooza in downtown Chicago, and we played Sunday evening. The show went really good, we were all riding high, feeling really good about the set and how everything was going. When we woke up the next morning, the van was missing from the parking lot. It was an attended lot, and the guy working their said he didn’t see anything. So whoever stole the van had crept in quickly and unsuspiciously enough that he just didn’t notice, the van just drove away and it didn’t look weird to him. Or he was in on it, who knows,” he states, letting out a wry laugh. “So like anyone would do in that situation we filed a police report, then we took to Twitter, and just let everyone in the area know what the van looked like, what equipment was missing. We were feeling hopeless, basically – because what were the chances of getting it back? Later that day our van and trailer were found in Chicago, empty. That made everyone feel better, but all the gear was still gone so that made everyone still feel bad overall. And then a week later our tour manager got a call from the Chicago police department, and they had entered a house and found all of our equipment. Well almost all of it, everything except six guitars and three keyboards. So all our amps, lights, the drums, were recovered and shipped back to Portland. It’s insane how social networking worked out for us, and how much support we got from everybody. I’ve never seen Twitter actually do anything so helpful before, at least something that helped me personally. It’s such a goofy word and doesn’t’ seem like it could cause any good, but it was really a great thing.”
What sets Portugal. The Man apart from many of their contemporaries is that they actually sound amazing. As Neighbors explains, their current state of sonic resoluteness is something that requires a deal of dedication. “We all like rock music, and we’ve been in a band for a long time. I wouldn’t say we sounded that amazing from the beginning, but over time, more recording, more studios and seeing these old vintage amps and different guitars and keyboards, just getting to know them better – wanting to own them rather than playing them just on record in a studio. Just saying, ‘We need this in our setup right now. I need to have this Moog instead of just playing it in the studio and then forget how to use it.’ A lot of it was that. We want to sound good. We jam live, we’re a lot heavier live. We like to have a polished sound, that sounds neat and like we’ve practised. Just having it so it seems like we know what we’re doing, if that makes sense.”
With a current rate of output which stands at around one studio LP per year, as well as an equally demanding touring regiment, it’s hard to imagine just where the band can roster in a little time off. “For the month of December everybody just goes to be with their families for the holiday. So John [Gourley] and Zach [Carothers] live in Alaska, they go up there for a month. Jason [Sechrist] and I live in Portland [Oregon], so that’s where we go. I mean, we have the option of a break, but we all like playing music so much that even if we’re not working on Portugal. The Man, someone’s always got a guitar in their hand. That’s usually when John starts writing the new record, when he’s away from the band and where there’s no pressure – so it’s fun for him, instead of just work. So that’s what that month off does for everybody. We’re still playing music, but there’s less pressure. It can be more fun a relaxing, just to be like, ‘I feel like playing piano for an hour and just playing whatever I want because I have the time and don’t have to work on something right now.’ And from that, work will be created,” he muses. “It’s a healthy thing, for sure.”
Coinciding with the release of In The Mountain In The Cloud came the accompanying short film for Sleep Forever, which featured a mix of stunning landscapes and brutal imagery. “That is more or less in John’s backyard in Alaska. We got the idea to just get a bunch of beautiful shots of the landscape, there are some amazing aerial shots taken from helicopter. After all of this gorgeous stuff, then all of a sudden something fucked up happens. We didn’t want to make just a really visually awesome and beautiful music video, we wanted there to be something more to it, the clincher – to make people not only go “did you see that new music video?” but “you gotta see this new music video and wait for it, somethings gonna happen.” So that’s what we did, John’s there running through the snow, he trips on his rifle, blows his head off and his dogs begin eating him,” Neighbors chuckles. “I think it’s great.”
BY LACHLAN KANONIUK
