The Current presents

Portugal. The Man

with La Luz

Doors: 7:00 p.m. | Performance: 8:00 p.m. 

INFORMATION | TICKETS

Portugal. The Man

Portugal. The Man soared to new heights in 2017 with the release of their now RIAA-certified Platinum album, Woodstock. The album was marked by the astounding success of their infectious single, “Feel It Still,” which earned the group a GRAMMY for “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance,” a 7x RIAA Platinum certification, a record setting 20-week residency at #1 on alternative radio, and an inescapable presence on the Top 40 airwaves.

Alongside the shine of their myriad of musical accomplishments lies the group’s long-standing passion for social justice. In fact, this is precisely the intersection in which Portugal. The Man thrives; throughout their career, the band has consistently exemplified how to deeply commit to both artistry and activism. This ultimately inspired them to launch the Pass The Mic Foundation in 2020, focused on universal issues related to human rights, community health, and the environment, with an emphasis on causes directly impacting Indigenous Peoples, including Alaska Native Health (providing the highest quality of health services for Alaska Native people) and Seeding Sovereignty (radicalizing and disrupting colonized spaces through land, body, food sovereignty work and more). The band is also committed to raising awareness and vital funds for the DHDDS community through the Frances Changed My Life campaign. Created in honor of Gourley’s daughter Frances, the campaign aims to support families affected by DHDDS by helping ease both the emotional and financial burdens that come with rare diseases. Over the past couple of years, the band has raised and donated over a million dollars across both charities.

Portugal. The Man have also partnered with an array of organizations such as National Coalition Against Censorship, The Skatepark Project (helping communities build public skate parks for youth in underserved communities), March for Our Lives (Gun Reform), Keep Oregon Well (Mental Health), and Protect Our Winters (Climate Change), to name just a few. In 2022, the band furthered their passion for activism when they launched PTM’s NIGHT OUT initiative, supporting disabled fans requiring ADA access.

In support of these important causes, Portugal. The Man has upcoming activations throughout the year! In July, Pass the Mic is partnering with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard for their Colorado festival dates and in September, there will be an online auction supporting Frances Changed My Life, featuring rare experiences with the band and friends, memorabilia, and more!

La Luz

With a credo adapted from science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, an album title from a collection of metaphysical poetry, and an expansion in consciousness brought on by personal crisis, guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland learns to embrace a changing world with unconditional love on News of the Universe, the new full-length from California rock band La Luz. 

News of the Universe is a record born of calamity, a work of dark, beautiful psychedelia reflecting Cleveland’s experience of having her world blown apart by a breast cancer diagnosis just two years after the birth of her son. It’s also a portrait of a band in flux, marking the first appearance for drummer Audrey Johnson and the final ones from longtime members bassist Lena Simon and keyboardist Alice Sandahl, whose contributions add a bittersweet edge to a record that is both elegy for an old world and cosmic road map to a strange new one.

But is there any band in the world more suited to capturing the chaos of change in all its messy beauty than La Luz? Formed by Cleveland in 2012, La Luz is beloved for their ability to balance bedlam and bliss, each new record another fine-tuning of the band’s mix of swaggering riffs with angelic vocals borrowed from doo-wop and folk; a band so reliably great that it makes the huge step forward in confidence and sheer musicality that is News of the Universe all the more formidable. Cleveland, also a writer and painter, has developed into a truly original songwriter with her own canon of haunted psychedelia that, in recent years, has drawn upon the changing landscape around her rural California home for inspiration, notably on last year’s critically acclaimed solo release, Manzanita, a magical realist documentation of her pregnancy and early motherhood that appeared on many year-end lists.

Yet if Cleveland has spent years writing songs about ghosts, what lurks in the shadows of News of the Universe is nothing less than death itself. “There are moments on this album that sound to me like the last frantic confession before an asteroid destroys the earth,” says Cleveland.

Sonically, the record is all urgency. Songs trip over themselves as if trying to outrun the apocalypse: the breathless pitter-pattering of toms on “Strange World,” the title track’s finger-tangling opening riff drenched in murky distortion. An atmosphere of doom hovers hazily over the Sgt. Pepper-esque baroque pop song “Poppies,” on which Cleveland sings of a wavering orange idyll about to be set ablaze by the late summer sun. On the similarly kaleidoscopic “Dandelions,” she figures the yellow flowers for unsuspecting “little suns” soon to be “turning into moons” as the season marches on. The synthesized sounds used on the band’s last record, 2021’s La Luz, to mimic the languid buzz and crackle of a summer’s day in the countryside have been cut adrift in space—now they are silvery comet tails, dapplings of space dust, showers of stars.

These earthy observations are inspired by Cleveland's walks around her home in the shell-shocked days post-diagnosis when she found she had to be very intentional about what she consumed. “Seeing the cycle of life, seeing things grow out of decay, the decay of other living things—was super comforting to me. I had to get to a place where I felt more comfortable with the idea of death,” she says.

But for every moment of fear, there is one of pure ecstasy. Shimmery chamber pop song “Blue Moth Cloud Shadow” puddles into a twinkly organ-driven reverie; “I’ll Go With You” starts out with the record’s sludgiest riff before turning into its prettiest song. “Always in Love” is a real power-of-love ballad that serves as the record’s centerpiece and is capped off by a fiery and jubilant guitar solo, Cleveland’s own “November Rain” moment.

The powerful sense of openness that permeates News of the Universe is at least partially due to the fact that it is a record made entirely by women—from the performing, writing, and producing all the way through to the recording, engineering, and mastering. “There is something inherently and simultaneously sweet and brutal about womanhood,” says Cleveland. “That is something I hear on this record.”