Music: Portugal. The Man

Frontman John Gourley on working with Grammy award-winning producer Danger Mouse

It was last spring 2012, and John Gourley – frontman of Portugal. The Man – found himself in New York City about to ring the bell at Danger Mouse’s apartment – a long way from his current home in Portland, and farther still from his real home in Alaska.

Six full-length albums in six years, nonstop touring, a stint with The Black Keys and festival stops at Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza – up until this moment, Portugal. The Man embodied all dimensions of DIY rock range.
When it came time to begin work on the seventh album, Gourley decided on a collaborative approach; from building houses with his father in Alaska to building a devoted fanbase, he had sought partnerships. So he took a bold step and rang Danger Mouse’s doorbell…

“I walked into his place,” Gourley remembers, “and it wasn’t going to happen. He was like, ‘Hey, man, just so you know, I don’t really want to record a rock band.’ And I was a little relieved. We’d done this by ourselves before, and we knew we could do it by ourselves again.”

Danger Mouse revealed how much he loved In The Mountain In The Cloud, the 2011 follow-up to Portugal. The Man’s break out record The Satanic Satanist. “From that very first meeting,” says Danger Mouse, “we were very ambitious about what we could do… otherwise there was no point. So we decided to try and make something really special.”

So, Danger Mouse – aka Brian Burton, the five-time Grammy award winning producer behind the likes of Gnarls Barkley, Beck, The Black Keys and, more recently, U2 —and the band agreed that they were game for the challenge and began production on what would become Evil Friends.

Together they decamped to Los Angeles and spent a good year, slowing things down, taking their time, evolving Evil Friends into the record it is. “I felt like I was watching them do something special, and I wanted to let them do it, so sometimes I was more hands-on, but sometimes more hands-off than I had been with anyone” says Danger Mouse. “They had done enough albums that I thought it would be fun to shake it up a little bit.”

“In the beginning, I asked Brian why he had wanted to talk about making a record,” recalls Gourley. “And he admitted that he was surprised when he saw us live. ‘I didn’t know you guys could sound like that’. There had been this perception that we’ve been something else — and I’ve noticed it, at festivals, everywhere — that we were something we were not.

Portugal. The Man, The Haunt, Thursday 12 September, 7pm, £7.50