Night Music: Portugal. The Man, “Modern Jesus”

I don’t know anything about this band. Wikipedia says they’re a rock band from Wasilla Alaska. No word if they’ve gotten into any punch outs with the Palins. The music on this cut isn’t rock. There’s lots of electronics and the vocalist is doing a blue-eyed soul thing, and then when they get into chorus it gets kind of over overlaid and sonically compressed, like modern hit songs. Not rock. The album this is from, Evil Friends, was produced by Danger Mouse, who got famous mixing up the Beatles White Album with Jay-Z’s Black Album. He called it the Gray Album, and it was pretty good, but the work of a studio artist, not a hacker. Then he made that giant hit Crazy, with CeLo Green.

In any case, the lyrics on this song are great, “the only faith we have is waking up,” the attitude is strong and I like the vocals and the song itself. And the video is fab. This may be the sound of a rock band turning into a pop band, but I like it.

One thought on “Night Music: Portugal. The Man, “Modern Jesus”

  1. Salfino was all worked up about Portugal The Man a couple years ago and introduced me. What I heard at the time was total Bolan ripoff.

    As you know, I’m not afraid of ripoff, but this was too blatant for me and I never got anything.

    This here is not blatant Boan ripoff, but I think I liked the Bolan ripoff better. I believe guitars were involved.

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