Portugal. The Man at The Camp

Portugal. The Man – The Camp – 3 August 2010

Words by Brendan Monteiro / Photo’s by Sean Gibson

A barrage of old school fuzz mixed with some downtempo organ greets me as Portugal. The Man start their set. The distortion builds momentum as the band gets louder and louder until eventually John Gourley settles his vocals into the mix and gives the brashness of the opener a subtle soft tone. His vocals have a calming nature and the tones he emits definitely contrives a Soul feel to it. The variation between the soulful vocals and the raw classic distored blues tones has a relaxing effect and is almost lament-full at times. The songs melt into each other as Portugal. The Man whisk us away to another time and place.

Tonight is my first introduction to any material prior to The Satanic Satanist and I am dubious at first but slowly the older material starts making just as much impact as their newer material. ‘And I’ stands out as my favourite from their back cataloge while ‘People Say’ seems to be the crowd pleaser. ‘And I’ has a really dirty tone to the distortion that works so well with the rest of the feel of the song. Something about it just reminds me of Joe Cocker (not vocally), it’s a feeling that reoccurs many times during the night and I still can’t put my finger on it. The songs take me back in time, when films weren’t crystal sharp in full HD, when they had noise marks in them, when you could hear fingers sliding down the necks of guitars on a record or a unrehearsed noise in the background; when things were real.

They end the night with 1989 and a quick “thank you so much for watching, that’s all the songs we have”, it’s a humble and perfect end to one hell of an impressive evening.