Portugal. The Man leaves a sonic labor of love behind it as its founders return to Alaska to rest, hang out and play for the home crowd.
The band's latest release, "Censored Colors," came out in September, followed by a relentless tour that took it from the East Coast through the Midwest and back to the Pacific Northwest during the presidential campaign. Along the way, the two band members originally from Wasilla -- John Baldwin Gourley and Zachary Scott Carothers -- fielded questions about the year's No. 1 political celebrity, Gov. Sarah Palin.
Big-city reporters called for interviews, fans wanted to know their views and everyone suddenly knew where to find Wasilla on the map.
"We got questions all the time," said vocalist and songwriter Gourley. "Papers from L.A., Boston, Phoenix and all these huge cities were calling us for interviews, and we're like, 'Why are you calling us? We're dudes in a band.' "
Not just any band, mind you, but a band with eclectic tastes and influences, a moody, psychedelic sound and a lot of momentum. Portugal's video, "Lay Me Back Down," won "The Freshman" showdown on mtvU last month, earning a spot on the 24-hour college network's regular rotation.
The group did a live recording over the Thanksgiving weekend in Portland, Ore., just days after finishing its tour and will lay down tracks for a new album in mid-January. Gourley writes most of the songs, but bassist Carothers provides moral support.
"If he comes up with a riff, I'll play acoustic guitar over and over again while he comes up with melodies," said Carothers, the other Alaskan in the group. "He comes up with a skeleton and some scratch tracks, and then I play around on bass, the rhythm section, and we start building on it."
Work for the band -- which includes Ryan Neighbors on keyboards and vocals, Jason Sechrist on drums and Garrett Lunceford as the touring drummer -- never ends, and they like it that way. "We work harder than any other band I know," Carothers said. "We don't take days off. We tour as much as we possibly can, and we write music as much as we can."
Coming home means a deserved rest, not to mention a familiar bed, home-cooked meals and family time. Carothers, for one, "can't wait to sit at my mom's house and do pretty much nothing for a few weeks."
Except play a few concerts and ferry his band mates from the Lower 48 so they can "do the lame, stereotypical Alaskan stuff like dog-sledding, boarding, sledding."
Coming home plays a big part of their lives, so much so that Gourley described "Censored Colors" as an album about family. "The whole record was so about family and respect and so much about Alaska and how I was raised, and that theme just carried from start to finish."
That same album includes sounds ranging from repetitive acoustic riffs to jazzy, moody melodies and something akin to the soundtrack for a dream sequence.
The high vocals prompt comparisons to The White Stripes and The Mars Volta, said Carothers, "which is kind of funny. None of us listens to Mars Volta. We both play rock 'n' roll, and we both like progressive rock 'n' roll, and both our singers have high voices. So yes, I'd say our influences are the same, and when someone says we sound like a band, I agree we probably listen to the same things."
But they mostly try to avoid getting boxed into a sub-genre of pop or rock. They dig all kinds of music from the influential Beatles to alt-country, the blues and hip-hop.
"Every single time we say we're going to write a soul record in advance, but it just becomes what it becomes," Gourley said. "This time we're talking about doing a spacey Motown sound. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Sam Cook."
But who knows what will come of their January recordings; Gourley shuns notepads and just lets "the stories build up and blend together. I don't have melodies or anything. I just go in and start singing."
The band approaches concerts with the same loose attitude, letting one song lead to the next, old songs lead to new songs, mixing up genres and tempos and drifts. For the band's two founders, playing in Alaska only makes the gigs more fun.
"We've played 300 shows a year in the last three years and haven't had more than three-week breaks," Gourley said. "Our drummer lives in Seattle, our keyboard player in Portland, but we always come back home."
• Find Daily News reporter Dawnell Smith at adn.com/contact/dsmith or call 257-4587.
Portugal. The Man
When: 8 p.m. today. 9 p.m. Saturday
Where: today, downstairs at Club M (420 W. Third Ave.); Saturday, Mat-Su Resort (1850 E. Bogard Road, Wasilla)
How much: $20 for Club M, $15 for Mat-Su Resort
Web: www.portugaltheman.net
By DAWNELL SMITH
dsmith@adn.com