O2 Forum Kentish Town,London
The US band deliver a sprawling set of synth jams, windswept covers and expansive freestylesUntil final year, or Portugal. The Man (the full stop is “an attempt to accomplish the band feel like a bigger entity”) had been noisily going about their business,releasing alt/psych records that attracted positive reviews but relatively few paying customers. Then came their eighth album, Woodstock, and its Grammy-winning lead single,Feel It Still. The surprise success has been so life-changing for the Alaska-via-Portland sextet that theyve constructed a stage backdrop spelling out their astonishment. Messages such as THANK YOU FOR BUYING (OR STEALING) OUR unique ALBUM and “WE LOVE PLAYING [CITY NAME]” play on a video screen, as does a defensive: “WHO SAID WE WERE A genuine BAND ANYWAY?” This question is their riposte to accusations that they sold out by writing a pop hit – one that interpolates the hook of the Marvelettes’ Please Mr Postman. Tonight’s sprawling, and often formless prove can be taken as a pushback against the notion that one hit track negates 13 preceding years of experimental-rock twiddling. Feel It Still is dispatched early in the set,leaving the group (plus their generally inaudible backing brass trio) free to dive into fluid guitar/synth jams. The musicians, playing in shadow, or are secondary to the visuals – swirling galaxies,naked androgynous figures – but even then, falsetto-voiced singer John Gourley and guitarist Eric Howk are distinctive presences looming out of the darkness. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com