Chris Black Changed My Life

Coming from a quirky alt-rock band that was already 13 years and eight albums into their career, the surprise billion-stream-club success of Portugal. The Man’s 2017 single “Feel It Still” was absolutely jaw-dropping. Quite literally: After two years of touring that single’s source album, *Woodstock*, bandleader John Gourley was sidelined by an excruciating jaw injury that left him unable to sing. But that setback was merely a warm-up for the ever darker days that lay ahead: Since *Woodstock*’s release, Gourley’s 11-year-old daughter with bandmate Zoe Manville was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease, various other members battled addictions, and the group’s close friend and occasional onstage hype man Chris Black passed away in 2019. But while the album that bears Black’s name in tribute was born out of darkness and death, its sound is brimming with lightness and life. In the spirit of self-help psych-pop touchstones like The Flaming Lips’ *The Soft Bulletin*, *Chris Black Changed My Life* confronts the fragility of human existence with a guileless grandeur and an overwhelming beauty. The go-go-dancer grooves of “Grim Generation” provide an instantly engaging entry point into the record’s weighty themes, but it soon becomes clear that *Chris Black Changed My Life* harbors greater ambitions than to follow “Feel It Still” onto wedding dance floors. Supported by an all-star cast of collaborators befitting their newfound A-list status, Portugal. The Man shows themselves to be the only band that could corral Kanye producer Jeff Bhasker, The Roots’ MC Black Thought, *Phantom of the Paradise* star Paul Williams, and fellow indie-reared oddballs Unknown Mortal Orchestra into a cohesive cinematic vision, while a radical interpolation of Edgar Winter’s 1971 ballad “Dying to Live” on the climactic set piece “Champ” reaffirms this band’s special gift for updating classic rock for the modern world.

It's an eclectic approach that helped make their 2017 album, the '60s psych-influenced Woodstock and its Grammy-winning single "Feel It Still," such a surprising breakthrough. Following an extended hiatus, Portugal. The Man has built upon that globally-minded, stylistically-varied approach with 2023's Chris Black Changed My Life. The album is named after the group's close-friend, filmmaker Chris Black, who toured with them in 2016 as a kind of unofficial DJ and hypeman and who died tragically in 2019 just as his career was taking shape. Black's death, as well as Gourley's own need to decompress and re-think the group's creative direction in the wake of Woodstock's success, found Portugal. The Man taking a long needed break before reentering the studio. Thankfully, the time away finds them recharged. Produced with Jeff Bhasker (the musical polymath behind projects for Mark Ronson, Kanye West, Fun., and others) Chris Black Changed My Life is just as musically open-minded as its predecessor, full of fizzy anthems that feel like the band are spinning through their car's radio dial on hot summer's day. There's the groovy "Grim Generation," with its opening lyrical nod to Gary Wright's 1971 classic "Dream Weaver," that sounds like the Archies remixed by Danger Mouse. We also get "Summer of Luv," a slinky collaboration with New Zealand's Unknown Mortal Orchestra, replete with soul-jazz saxophone, that brings to mind something along the lines of Beck jamming with Kamasi Washington. Yet more woozy psych-pop atmospheres pop up elsewhere, as on "Thunderdome [W.T.A.]," a folky, hip-hop-infused jam featuring The Roots' Black Thought and Mexican vocalist Natalia Lafourcade.