PORTUGAL. THE MAN

John Gourley never went hunting with his father. Raised in and outside of assorted small towns on the fringe of the Alaskan wilderness, Gourley certainly knew how to handle his gun, even as a kid—a way of life and survival, an inheritance from two parents who had moved to the state to belong to its woods. Childhood friends certainly had hunting stories, and Gourley had been mushing with his parents, John and Jennifer, until he almost lost his ears from frostbite. But hunting? No.

When Gourley was 10, though, a massive moose shuffled through the snow in their yard as father and son ate lunch. “Hey, Johnny, do you want to go hunting today?” his dad asked, the young John responding with the enthusiastic assent of overdue expectation. They suited up for the winter and tracked the moose through the snow, watching it for a long time as it slowly chewed some bark. A cycle began: His father would raise his rifle, say “Johnny, are you sure?”, and then lower the gun, despite his son’s assurance that he was indeed old enough to watch this mighty animal fall. They never took a shot that day. Instead, older John Gourley taught little John Gourley a lesson—they had food in the refrigerator and money to buy more if needed. This moose should live, so that others may someday survive. Take what you need, and get on with your life.

That is the spirit that suffuses SHISH, the 10th album from Gourley’s band, Portugal. The Man, and the first he’s made not only since leaving Atlantic Records to start a label of his own, KNIK, but also since completing his handicap-accessible home studio in Oregon. The first Portugal. The Man album, since completing the bulk of 2023’s Chris Black Changed My Life four years ago, SHISH represents a period of intense reappraisals for Gourley, both in music and in life. Where Chris Black featured a sprawling cast of bandmates and special guests, SHISH was built with a minimal cast at home. And it combines Gourley’s most revealing writing yet, not only about the lessons he learned being raised in Alaska, but also some of the lessons he’s already learned raising his daughter, Frances, who was diagnosed with one of the world’s rarest genetic disorders four years ago. On SHISH, Portugal. The Man’s world gets smaller. Gourley’s musical vision, however, has perhaps never been grander.

When Gourley was considering his major-label exit sometime last year, he started asking around about potential producers. Portugal. The Man had worked with some absolute titans, like Danger Mouse, Jeff Bhasker, and even Mike D. But when an old friend suggested he check out this kid named Kane Ritchotte, a Los Angeles native whose résumé had quickly grown to include work with Blake Mills and Miley Cyrus, Gourley could only laugh. More than a decade earlier, when Ritchotte was still a teenager, he slipped briefly into Portugal. The Man’s touring lineup, a fill-in drummer in an emergency situation. He hadn’t really known the songs, but Gourley had always admired his enthusiasm and commitment. He called Ritchotte and invited him to Oregon, where they had no musical agenda other than following Gourley’s self-proclaimed ADHD into whatever musical direction it may lead. The pair made SHISH—played almost entirely by Gourley and Ritchotte, some help on horns and background vocals, and even a little rapping from Zoe Manville notwithstanding—largely that way.

In January, when they were still very locked into shaping the sound of SHISH, Gourley and Ritchotte flew to Alaska to play two benefits for the restoration of a Sitka clan house, named one of the country’s most endangered historic places, and just one of many projects which Portugal. The Man’s foundation, Pass The Mic, supports. The band launched the organization in 2019 and have raised and donated over a million dollars to communities of Indigenous Peoples in the years since, while partnering with local Tribes to raise awareness at every PTM show. Seeing his home through the eyes of someone who had never been, Gourley came back to Oregon and wrote songs that reflected the lessons of his upbringing, songs that advocated for ways of life that most Americans might know at best from reality TV. His father’s list of what he would take into the woods on a six-foot toboggan—some grape jelly, a tarp, a hatchet—became the core of “Angoon,” an excoriation of an American political system that now wants to pretend borders matter after grabbing the land, lives, and ways of so many others. There was the image of his mother, up early in the blinding snow to fix a generator so her kids could watch cartoons, at the center of “Tyonek,” a testament to resilience so ingrained it lasts a lifetime. And there is, of course, opener and first single “Denali,” where the state’s great sign of encroaching fall—the beautiful fireweed—signals instead the stirring of a revolution. “Oh no kings, or master over me, marching towards a guillotine,” Gourley cheerily sings, a big beat bouncing beneath him. 

These personal tales and philosophies mirror a broader sense of musical freedom than Portugal. The Man has ever before embraced, in spite of how wide-ranging their music has always been. “Pittman Ralliers” bursts open as a bona fide piece of thrash metal, belligerent and urgent and technical, while finale “Father Gun” squeezes Naked City, Queen, Pink Floyd, and maybe a little glam metal into a five-minute prog opus. 

But Portugal. The Man’s long-standing center—inclusive and expansive pop, rooted in soul and psychedelia and sincerity—holds here, too. “Tanana” is a shape-shifting beauty about pushing off the weight of the world, about making love and sharing laughs even as bad news mounts outside. Portugal. The Man has rarely sounded so sweet and dreamy as at the start of “Knik,” but its life-affirming coda will inevitably arrive as a complete surprise, a heroic guitar solo wedged between a chorus about the pox of industrial society. And “Mush” is a breathless tale of life on the edge of the wilderness, the song moving with the same speed and wonder and unpredictability as guiding a team of dogs through the woods. End to end, SHISH embodies the energy of exploration, of the possibilities of a new frontier being opened to imagination. 

Portugal. The Man’s career has been a long series of surprises. They are, after all, the rare Alaskan rock band who became a mainland American institution. They are a hard-touring cult favorite who always seemed to make unapologetically idiosyncratic records, even on a major label. More than a decade deep into their discography, they had a massive pop hit with “Feel It Still,” a success they channeled not into making more music that sounded just like it but instead to make their two most diverse records ever, including this one. With SHISH, Gourley uses Portugal. The Man to sing about the more righteous world he has witnessed at home and that he now envisions for the rest of us—taking only what we need, advocating for others at every turn, and sharing the best of what we’ve learned to give everyone a chance to be better still.