Portugal. The Man are set to release their fifth full length studio album, entitled American Ghetto, on March 2nd, a release we’re looking forward to this year.

We’ve really liked their last album, The Satanic Satanist, and we look forward to American Ghetto with great anticipation, especially after hearing the first track off the album, The Dead Dog:

You can download the song for free at the official Portugal. The Man site. Frontman John Gourley had the following to say about the song:

“The Dead Dog” was the second song that Anthony Saffery, Adam Taylor and I began working on for the American Ghetto project. We started tracking this on my second day back in Boston… it may have been the first, I am not quite sure. This track began with a break beat and a loose set of chords that I had put together in the morning before tracking. Lyrically, this was the first album where I really went out and referenced the streets and places around where I grew up. “The Dead Dog” was a bar out towards Big Lake off Pittman Road where, no offense Pittman ralliers, some pretty shady folks spent their time. I don’t know what it was about that area that drew me in but it did, for whatever reason. As with all the songs on American Ghetto there is a focus on our teenage lives and the things we did and the paths we chose. Some of the moments are sadder than others but “The Dead Dog” was written more about the setting than with a specific person in mind.

The whole process of the American Ghetto recordings was basically a two week explosion of ideas followed by about 4 months of clean-up and focusing. This gave the songs space and time to breathe a bit before finding their true home in the album and in the finished piece.


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