Album Review: The Satanic Satanist, by Portugal The Man

This will be my first album review.  As it's been one that I've been listening to for the past few days, I thought it would be a good place to start....here we go!

First off- beautiful album art.  Always appreciate a good cover.

This album can be accurately described by the following words: fun, mesmerizing, and cool.  I feel that it contains some great textures and arrangements.  It's surely an album you can listen from start to finish and it wouldn't drag on.  There is also an element of call and response that really engages me as a listener and wants me to sing along (in my head at least).  Each song is digestible and appreciable as both its own thing and as a part of the canvas that is this album.

Instrumentally, each instrument does get a time to shine.  The drums are generally straightforward, but songs such as "Lovers in Love" and "Mornings" have really great grooves that really open up the stage for everything else to come through.  The bass is thankfully more than just barely audible.  The bass lines are groovy and interesting. They interplay with the melody and contribute to the soundscape in an exciting yet subtle manner (i.e. "The Woods").  Guitars are of course the most obvious instruments.  The tones are thick and meaty.  The guitar is NOT overdone though.  Because of its prominence it  is used to support the sound as a whole, which makes it pleasant to listen to.  Mild effects are used here and there, but a beautiful, warm, slight overdrive is the most common of these.  Finally, synths and keys are used here and there extremely tastefully.

Vocals deserve their own paragraph.  What we have here are vocals mostly in higher ranges.  There is quite a bit of headvoice and falsetto--but not in the smooth Bon Iver kind of way--more like "I have a naturally higher range"/Neil Young kind of way.  This range really stands out against the texture of the instruments.  It doesn't have to work hard to pierce through.  At the same time it's fun to listen to.  The interplay between the higher range vocals and the guitar give a sort of...toned down Jimi while riffing feel to the album.  By the way, the rhythm guitar gets totally Hendrixy all over.  Yum.

The production and mixing on the album are extremely good, in my opinion.  Volumes are very well in check and mesh perfectly.

One of my favorite aspects of the album is the descent into a nostalgic sadness that it incurs as it progresses.  The tracks start light and fun, groovy, even danceable.  Yet, as the album progresses, the songs, thematically, get deeper, and there is less of the happy go lucky sound that the first few songs provided.  Even the song "Everyone is Golden" which is a seemingly happy song has this cadence of a IV-iv-I at the end of the verses.  The turn to minor really evokes some previous happiness that tended to be part of the turnaround to the top.  The ending lines "nobody will love you" certainly do not help.  "Let You Down" fails to bring the mood up, for obvious reasons that include the title. Even the music has been simplified to a keyboard.  The layering of vocals provides distancing experience, like going deeper into a cave of sad thoughts that oppose the start of the album.  Then comes "Mornings" that with its ballad like 3/4 signature and desperate lyrics exiting the chorus "we'll be just fine."  What I love about this song, though, is the guitar solo.  The first little bridge connecting the chorus to the second verse has this chromatic solo that hits you like a brick wall.  We expect a tonal boring filler to bring us over to the verse but what we get is a simple note change that makes a shiver run down my back.  The note is so errant, so out of place, yet no better note could have been chosen to build tension.  Incidentally, that same IV-iv-I cadence is used in this song as well.

It's the small decisions like that above that make the album a really really great listen for me and a beautiful piece of art.  They take you through a swing of emotions from carefreeness to nostalgia for that same happiness once it is gone.

I thought of rating albums, but there's no point.  I'll only be reviewing my favorites and they are great in my book.

Bonus points: saw them live...they played mostly the album before this but they were pretty great!

Stay tuned for further reviews.  Here are some tracks you should listen to on this bad boy if you're interested and want a little taste:

"Lovers in Love"

"The Home"

"Mornings"