Foto-© Nathan Perkel

Portugal. The Man melden sich mit einem neuen Album zurück: SHISH erschien am 07.11.2025 via KNIK und zeigt auf, was im Leben wirklich zählt und was man noch in den „Toboggan“, wie John Gourley es nennt, mitnehmen sollte. Im Gespräch mit uns öffnet sich der Musiker wie jemand, der über Jahre hinweg Erfahrungen über Leben, Gemeinschaft und das wortwörtliche Überleben gesammelt hat. SHISH fungiert dabei nicht nur musikalisch, sondern auch als Spiegel der Gegenwart. Es reflektiert die chaotische Welt, gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen und politische Realitäten, aber auch die Kraft von Gemeinschaft, Aktivismus und Menschlichkeit.

Es geht um Herkunft und Haltung: Kindheit in Alaska, die prägende Hardcore-Szene in Portland, Isolation und Zugehörigkeit, die Tochter Frances, die mit einer seltenen Krankheit lebt, und der Aktivismus, der untrennbar mit Kunst verbunden ist. Im Interview erfahrt ihr, wie genau all diese Themen in einem einzigen Album zusammenkommen.

So, first of all, thanks for taking the time to speak with us. And congrats on your upcoming release of SHISH. I first discovered you during the In the Mountain in the Cloud era, and songs like Purple Yellow Red and Blue and later Modern Jesus really shaped my teenage years.
Damn, that‘s cool.

Yeah. And when I was listening to SHISH, it feels like you stay true to that core sound in a way, but balanced by reflection and maturity. I was wondering, do you feel that despite all your evolution, the heart of your music hasn’t really changed?
Yeah, I think I’ve just grown a beard. That’s probably the biggest change that’s happened. I saw some white coming in on my facial hair and really wanted to make sure everybody noticed. I’ve grown, I’ve changed. Musically, I have ADHD, so I tend to hyper-focus on things. The first six albums I made, I worked really quickly because I wanted to learn how to do everything. For me, music is about capturing whatever’s happening around you at any given moment. You take what’s happened in the past year, go into the studio, and put it on a record. I do it very simply. It’s not about trying to do anything too weird but it just follows my train of thought. I like very linear songwriting. When I signed to Atlantic Records, the reason I did it was to learn. That’s really why I want to do any of this – to learn from the best songwriters. I got to learn from Danger Mouse on Evil Friends, writing those songs. That was really fun, because you’re kind of playing for your big brother. You’re basically playing for the coolest kid in the room. He has such great taste that you just want to make something that fits his vibe. That’s why things sound like Danger Mouse. What’s interesting is, listening back, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t give me any instruments. He just has really good taste and is very specific, so you end up writing things that everyone in the room vibes on. I spent all those years at Atlantic learning from people like the Beastie Boys and Jeff Bhasker. So when I completed our contract, I thought, what would it sound like if I just went into a room with Kane Ritchotte, who I’d also played with on Evil Friends? At first it was just the two of us. He was on drums, I was on guitar and bass, and we just saw where the music took us.
Generally, we owe a lot of my songwriting to Germany. We spent a lot of time there, touring for three weeks at a time, twice a year. I remember our first trip during Waiter: “You Vultures!”. I came out there not knowing it was a sold-out show. We had never headlined before. I was like, “Oh shit, we’re headlining? Who’s the opener?” And there wasn’t one. We had a 30-minute record, but we had to play an hour, so we played it twice that first night in Konstanz. I didn’t know what else to do. The second night I started extending songs, jamming, adding parts and throwing in bits of Metallica or Slayer. I feel like this album embodies a lot of those lessons – where we just start extending songs, jamming and really seeing how things mesh together. There are a lot of sounds you wouldn’t normally combine, but they work because of the way we play together. Kane was there for much of that journey. It was nice being in a space where we didn’t have to overthink things. Looking back, I don’t think it’s smart to overanalyze while you’re in it – just let it happen. But analyzing the record afterwards, it reminds me of picking up your phone today. There’s chaos in the news feed, chaos in your social feed that you’ve curated, that your algorithm feeds you. There’s chaos everywhere.

You also touch on so many different topics throughout the record. It really feels like a reflection of society right now. There is just so much happening everywhere.

It’s scrolling. You scroll and you’re like, oh my God, ICE is in Portland abducting people, kidnapping people. And then, oh, cute puppy. I like puppies. Yeah, it is that chaos. I felt like that’s what it was. A lot of this stuff was born out of just going in, and there were all these influences from the time that Kane and I played together that just seeped in naturally. The album opens with the first two songs, which musically capture that feeling. I’m slowly picking up my phone, and then I open it, and it’s Metallica.

Absolutely, yes. I want to come back to that part later on. When I first listened to the album, the first song I clicked on was Pittman Ralliers, and I was honestly a little shook. Like, damn, that’s the second song on the album? Haha. Maybe because you mentioned it already, you recorded this album largely at your home studio in Oregon with Kane. I was wondering, how exactly did that collaboration come about?
I finished my contract with Atlantic and had a really great time there. I love Craig and Julie – Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald. They’re literally the smartest people I know in music and just really inspiring. When I left, I realized I was in a totally different position than when I signed. I could go to any label I wanted, talk to anybody. You get invited into the rooms like when we got the Grammy. I realized: Yeah, I got it. You guys want to sign me, and it was going around a little bit, and I feel like I kind of know what I don’t want to do. But I also do want to ask questions in these rooms, like, “What do you see as the next step? What would you see as the next step for me?”. In one of those rooms, somebody said, “Hey, I don’t know your relationship with Kane Ritchotte because I know you played together, but he’s been producing really great music.”. I said, “Well, I’m going to talk to Kane in a minute” because he is incredible. He just always has been, but he’s also always been a little brother to me. It was really great that somebody suggested him as a peer instead of, like, bringing him in as a drummer. I brought him up as a peer, and I can’t thank them enough for suggesting it. This happened in a conversation with Warner, within the Atlantic family. I knew it was something I wanted to do. I thought it was really smart to go in with somebody from that period. Because as you said, I feel like I hear a lot of that in there. I picked up guitars and thought, oh yeah, Kane knows all these jams I did. He kind of knows how I play really well, but from an era predating Woodstock.

Okay, so I guess you can really hear it, especially that it feels very personal and grounded. But not just because of reconnecting with Kane, it also feels very much grounded in Alaska. John, you’ve often spoken about your childhood there, about small towns and cold winters. Can you tell me more about that core inspiration and whether it played a role in the album?
Yeah, so it’s kind of funny. My dad always has these little nuggets of knowledge that he drops on me every now and then, and this one really guided the album. He told me, “Hey, I haven’t heard a good protest song in a while.” That inspired me to write People Say. I also wrote So American because I was on the border of Mexico and Texas where I recorded it. A lot of this comes from things my dad says, like for Woodstock, Feel It Still, he said, “What’s taking so long? Don’t you just go into a studio with your tools and build a house?” That’s what he does – he’s a builder. I thought, yeah, that’s pretty smart. For this album, he was talking to me about dog sledding. My parents grew up as dog sled mushers and ran races. You’re on a sled pulled by dogs, out in the middle of nowhere, no neighbors, no power, no phone, taking baths in a little tin tub. I asked my dad to draw a picture of this sled. He said, “Well, that’s funny. Every night when I go to bed, all I think about is what I would put in a six-foot toboggan when I’m ready to leave.” There’s no “where are you going?” or “what are you doing?”, really just thinking about what to take. That idea of – what are the things you would take in that toboggan – really guided my songwriting, whether I realized it or not. There are lots of lists in the record, like cranberries, salmon berries, blackberries, blueberries, currants. Also Alaskan berries you should eat, not the dangerous ones from Into the Wild – if anybody gets that reference.

Oh, yes. Of course, haha. I was just slow.
No, I didn’t set it up properly. This is like indigenous knowledge. So what are the things you need? I think there are things the album represents, like what you would put into a toboggan, not just what I would put into a toboggan. I’ve never really written super personal music, but I do feel like this is a rural kid record. This is rural music. I love to hear what other people would take into the woods with them.

Probably a lighter. A lot of people wouldn‘t be able to start a fire without one.
That’s smart. Those are the things you’d want to take. You’d want to take things with multiple uses. A tarp is one, that’s part of the album. You have to take it because it provides shelter. It’s plastic that covers something to keep it from getting wet. It’s basically a raincoat, but also a big blanket. You can use it for shelter, to collect water, or for insulation. It’s a blanket too. A bucket is another easy one. It carries everything, collects water, carries berries, and you can use it for a lot of stuff. It can also be a seat or even a drum set.

I also want to talk about your album artwork because to me it was such a striking image. It’s a seal, right?
Can I ask you what you saw when you first looked at it?

Yeah. I actually saw the seal. I wasn’t 100% sure, but it looked like a seal being hunted.
So, my band does a lot of fundraising and awareness work for indigenous knowledge. Into the Wild is a great example of the importance of knowing what berries you can and can’t eat. I often find myself in very progressive, liberal circles because of music and art. We see a lot of the world and different walks of life. What I notice is that there was a kid from an Alaskan island who posted on social media about catching a whale with his village. There was outrage from the left. This is really fascinating because liberals are also the first people to support minorities – but do they really understand their way of life? There’s a lot of virtue signaling. It makes you feel good because you think you‘re helping, but it’s not really about the community. I know the first thing you‘re going to see is death – on the cover. But then you see it differently depending on your perspective. It’s a hunter bringing a seal back to the village to feed the community. I could give you another great anecdote. Again, this is another dad story where you‘re just like, what is this dude on?

Yes, please! Go on.
My dad taught me a lot about this. I had never gone hunting growing up. I was taught how to shoot. I carried guns since I was six years old, especially for protection against moose. I know that‘s crazy for a lot of people. I never had neighbors. I would go into town to go to school and then back out to the bush. Out to rural Alaska, off-grid. At the beginning of school years, other kids would say they went hunting with their dads. That’s the end of summer thing – you go hunting with your dad. I‘ve never gone hunting with my dad, but I learned how to do all the things – learned how to shoot and track. One day, a moose walked by our window, and my dad asked if I wanted to go hunting. I was excited and said yes. He shows me how to find the moose – we track it down and get to it. I‘m terrified because moose are super aggressive – they will trample you. At this point, we‘re like 20 yards away from this moose. We‘re just watching it eat, very closely. My dad says, “are you sure you want me to get the moose, Johnny?” He points the gun and I‘m waiting – there is no shot. My dad asked me several times if I wanted him to get the moose. Eventually, he stands up and says, “Hey Johnny, we‘re not gonna get the moose.” He walks me back to the house and explains why – because we don‘t need it. We have a place to get groceries and we can afford them. “If you ever need this moose one day, it‘s gonna be right here.” – he‘s not saying this exact moose, but in the future a moose is going to be there. It‘s because it knows to find food here – it knows that it‘s safe here. It’s becoming part of this life cycle that we should all be paying close attention to. There’s a bigger anecdote here about how we view the world. You can walk into a coffee shop today and get salmon, even lox. That used to be something you’d only find at a seafood restaurant or fish shop. Now it’s everywhere. But you have to imagine what happens to the salmon population when it’s available 24/7, 365 days a year. It spoils quickly. And eventually, you’re going to run out. You want that salmon to still be there when you actually need it. That’s what the cover represents to me: feeding a village. And don’t worry, that’s not all the seals or whales. They’re not endangered because of indigenous hunting. That’s how people have lived for thousands of years. It’s the cultural understanding behind it that really matters – it’s their way of life.

What you just touched upon – I think a lot of people, even with the best intentions, are very supportive of others or of different communities, but they don’t always have the perspective to understand that certain things are deeply tied to someone’s culture. That context is often missing.
It’s difficult for me living in Portland, as you can imagine. I don’t always get it. I don’t know what people are talking about half the time, but I do know what I stand for from person to person. Humanity is innate in all of us because we all know what hurts. I like to learn. That’s a big reason why I started a foundation called the PTM Foundation — Pass The Mic. It literally means: get out of the way. Just give them the mic. You don’t speak for anybody. Selfishly, it also lets me go around the world and learn about the land and what I would need to do to survive out here – what I would need to know. I think it’s so cool to learn from people who have been there forever. And that kind of knowledge exists everywhere – in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal. You just have to dig a little deeper sometimes. Just look for it.

Definitely. I think it’s really admirable that, with your position and influence in music, your activism has taken on so many layers and that you genuinely contribute a lot to those causes. You just mentioned supporting Alaskan Native communities, but you‘re also advocating for mental health and making shows more accessible. When I was listening to SHISH, I felt like a lot of those ideas are reflected in the record. So I was wondering, when it comes to Portugal. The Man, it’s never just the music, it’s also the activism. Do you see your activism and songwriting as coming from the same emotional place, or do they fulfill different needs for you?
Damn, you know what’s funny? I’ve never thought about that. I guess it does. Not to sound like a total dipshit, but yeah, it’s all the same thing. You write music because that’s your community. That’s where folk music comes from. I feel really privileged that I get to see thousands of years of song every time somebody comes out and wants to sing. It’s whatever anybody wants to do. You want to sing? Hell yeah, I love to hear it. But I’m really meant to take my song from Leipzig to Hamburg – for example. And on the way, I bring it to somebody in that community and say, here are the chords, here’s the chorus, do you want to write your verse? That’s really what music should be doing. You hand it to somebody, and they take it and tell their story. That’s where rap and hip-hop have really embodied that spirit. The interpolation, taking a song and telling your story over it. It’s the most folk approach to songwriting. It’s literally just: let me tell you a story. It’s everything I think music should be. I love that it’s not bound to any subject or rule. It’s just, what do you feel right now? Rap is probably peak punk to me. You can’t get more punk than that.

One track we talked about earlier that I really want to come back to is Pittman Ralliers. When I first listened to it, I was like, damn, this is really heavy, really aggressive. I loved it. That’s totally my style of music nowadays. So I was wondering, what is this track about, and why did you decide to go that hard on this one in particular?
Okay, so Denali is the first song on the album, and Kane and I just played that one in a room. We just played it. As it rang out, I started riffing, and this riff came up that turned into something really fast and very hardcore-esque, just a totally different world. I thought how cool that it intuitively just happened as we just started doing it. So I took that and sent it to Nick Reinhart from Death Grips. He also plays in Bygones, Disheveled Cuss, and Pinback. Death Grips is really intense music, and I’ve played with Nick forever. I basically handed him the end of Denali and said, “Hey, would you write a song thinking about this inspiration I give you?” I knew he’d do something wild with it. He and Kane went in and jammed it out based on this little sketch I’d given them. At the same time, David Marion, who used to play in Fear Before the March of Flames and now plays in memorydrip, was staying at the house. It just fits the whole ethos of everything. The whole thing tied back to why I play music the way I do, because of the hardcore scene. Like, you would call me an activist, but to me it’s just good manners, good humor, and mutual respect, and that’s what hardcore thrives on. It’s like, do you respect me? I need that. If you don’t, we might have a problem. David took me on some of my very first tours, and honestly, my band wouldn’t exist without that scene. Pittman Ralliers just felt right. It felt like the day I left Alaska and discovered the hardcore scene in Portland. That’s from Denali, the highest peak in North America, to a sweaty little 150-cap venue where we were screen printing our own t-shirts. That’s what that song is to me – screen printing our own t-shirts. It’s that spirit, mutual respect. Be a good neighbor, you know?

Definitely. For someone who hasn‘t heard SHISH yet – what other themes do you touch upon on this record ?
Yeah, I think it says it all, but it’s representative of, again, the toboggan. It should be about what you’d want to take with you when you’re ready to go. It’s all my experience. It’s all Alaska. It’s all traveling and seeing people and then yearning for that isolation again, because I like that. I’ve experienced a lot of things. I’m very lucky. I got to do everything I ever wanted to do. So what I take from that is that you’re not beholden to any of it. There are no rules. You don’t play music because there are rules, you play music because there aren’t any. Whether that’s in the pop scene or anywhere else, nobody’s going to stop me from achieving that goal. Maybe that’s some weird self-driven thing, the need for attention or whatever, but you do it. I think that’s punk in itself. Yeah, so chase it down Chappell Roan, haha. I applaud you for doing it.

Okay, I think we’re heading towards the end, but I really wanted to ask this question about your daughter, who’s had such a huge impact on your life and on everything. You’ve built the project, Frances Changed My Life, that raises awareness while you’re still touring and making music, which is pretty incredible. So I was wondering, how has fatherhood changed your relationship to your work — in your case, to your music, to what you write about, and to why you make music in the first place? Or maybe it hasn’t changed at all?
It does. You can’t help it. You can’t stop it from changing the way you write. It even changes the way you watch movies, that’s for sure. When she was first born, I was not able to handle it if a kid got hurt in a movie. I would just lose it. The way it affects my writing is that you start to see how children react to art. My daughter Frances has a rare genetic disorder called DHDDS. It affects a lot of things, one of them being that she can’t regulate emotions. She can intellectualize them, though, which is really interesting – she can see it after she does it. She’ll say, “Oh my God, I’m so sad because I lost control. I’m sorry, I have a difficult time controlling my emotions.” That alone is inspiring because that’s what music is. It’s emotional, it’s explosive, and you think about it afterwards. That was very much my approach to this album. Zoe, my wife and partner, has been in Boston at genetics conferences, talking to doctors and taking notes day in and day out. And, you know, fuck Donald Trump and everything he’s done to dismantle this kind of work, I’ve got no time for that. It’s crazy. She’s out there doing the work, and it all comes down to parents advocating for these kids. One of the weirdest parts about the American healthcare system – and just our system in general – is that it’s terrible for people, but at the same time it drives great advancements because there’s so much money in it. Capitalism drives research. So with the Frances Changed My Life foundation, we’re raising money for medical advancements, and that’s something people in the U.S. can get behind. They‘re like, “Yep, there‘s money there – we can try to do that.” Our goal is to raise money and find drug repurposing for diseases like Frances’s, which have Parkinson’s-like symptoms. It‘s neurodegenerative. It affects her nervous system and cognition – similar to Alzheimer’s or dementia. Our goal is to patent treatments for diseases like Lyme diseases, and beat the pharmaceutical companies to that, so that your socialized healthcare has access to these medicines. Everything we do here affects people worldwide. I think that’s really special. I see this special kid who has to struggle with scoliosis. I’ve got to put a back brace on her every morning. She’s so funny – she’s like, “I want to wear my back brace. My friend Jacob wears one and it’s cool as hell.” She’s stoked to wear it. That’s part of her style, that’s personal style. Are you kidding me? Who has a back brace? Nobody. That’s inspiring. It’s inspiring to see a kid who struggles with so much still find joy in it, like, “Yeah, this is sick. I put stickers on my back brace.” That shit looks so uncomfortable, though. I look at her and I’m like, “Man, Frances, I’m so sorry you’ve got to strap that thing on.” It squeezes tight and moves her hip over. But she knows it helps her. She also knows it’s stylish. So yeah, style. You’re styling yourself, kid. You’ve got to make it yours.

I mean, you got to make it your own. It makes sense – it’s style, it’s her style. I love that, especially the part with the stickers. It’s like patches, it’s super metal.
Yes, exactly.

Portugal. The Man Tour:
05.03.26 Hamburg, Inselpark Arena
06.03.26 Köln, Palladium
09.03.26 Berlin, Columbiahalle