The sound of YG’s “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)” blared through stage monitors and reverberated against every anxious body that packed a sold out WOW Hall Saturday night, in a playful homage to the rapper performing at the McDonald Theatre just a half-mile away.
It would have been a disorienting preface to any other rock show, but it made sense for a group as borderless and difficult to define as Portugal. The Man.
Strings of orbs lit the venue like the aurora borealis that you might expect to see in the sky over the now Portland-based band’s birthplace of Wasilla, Alaska.
Portugal. The Man opened the show with the title track from its 2007 album Church Mouth, with vocalist John Gourley preaching in a ghostly falsetto.
The band continued its twenty-one-song set with music from four more of its eight full-length albums, including Censored Colors, The Satanic Satanist and In the Mountain in the Cloud. Their most recent release, 2013’s Evil Friends, dominated the latter part of the show.
The band also played “Noise Pollution,” a new song presumably from their still unreleased Gloomin’ + Doomin’.
True to the group’s eclectic nature, Portugal managed a smooth transition into “So American” with a psychedelic rendition of Charlie Day’s “Dayman” from the screwball comedy, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Before leaving the stage, the band fused Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” with “Purple Yellow Red and Blue,” causing the well-mannered crowd to turn raucous.
Portugal. The Man returned for a three-song encore that began with “Sea of Air,” momentarily lulling the audience as they clapped along to rhythmic tambourine jingles. As the band began to play “Modern Jesus,” a heavy fog and stark backlighting obscured the members into silhouettes, later illuminated by chaotic strobes as Gourley sang about his frustration with religious corruption.
The set ended with “Atomic Man,” pulling the crowd in one last time while the lyrics, “I’m atomic man, I’m the moon that pulls the tides that take the sand,” washed in and out.
Portugal. The Man’s performance at the WOW Hall can best be described as kaleidoscopic. Gourley’s lyrics provide clarity for the band’s muddled cross-genre experimentation, taking concertgoers on a trip through an auditory fantasy world without once losing sight of the reality that inspired its creation.
Portugal. The Man guitarist Eric Howk said that there is a special energy in playing the final show of a tour.
“We gave everything we had left,” Howk said. “That last little squeeze of the dish towel. That was tonight.”
(Hannah Steinkopf-Frank/Emerald)
