One of the films a young Baldwin Gourley took in was “Wizards,” Bakshi’s first foray into fantasy, a visually rich story about elves, wars, wizards and Nazi propaganda. It’s vulgar, violent and completely warped. Turns out, it — along with movies such as “Fire and Ice” and “Fantastic Planet” — had quite the effect on him.

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“I think it’s the craziest thing to watch as a little kid because I’ve watched it recently and it’s insane,” Baldwin Gourley said, of “Wizards.” “Watching it now, I get all those feelings I had as a little kid. It completely warped my mind in almost every way. Every way I look at the world I feel like is completely warped because of that movie.”

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Those films also wound up having a strong influence on several of the songs on Portugal. The Man’s fourth record, “The Satanic Satanist” (Approaching AIRballoons/Equal Vision)

Baldwin Gourley insists “The Satanic Satanist” not a concept record, but the songs do focus on his childhood in Alaska — specifically, the years 1987 to early 1993, when his family was particularly nomadic. (Portugal. The Man is based out of Portland, Ore.) The 11-song set hits on themes of Alaskan life, fantasy, home and growing up, all set to a funky and psychedelic Motown-inspired beat.

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Express asked Baldwin Gourley to take us through “The Satanic Satanist” track by track, all of which you can listen to during his guided tour.

“People Say”

It came around because I was hanging out with my dad in Alaska and it was something he brought up. We were watching a Pete Seeger documentary and it got my dad talking about Vietnam and how it related to what was going on now. It just kind of came around. It was obviously inspired by Pete Seeger, Neil Young, my dad and The Band. It was more about connecting the two generations, than it was an anti-war song. … In everyday life people just completely forget about the fact that so many people die in wars and those people, for the most part are left behind.

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“Work All Day”

That song was so written about my dad and my brother, the constant working and the constant work ethic — they’re always moving. It was split between that and the people who do the exact opposite. In my experience — in a lot of small towns — people move to drugs and easy money, and I think Alaska is an easy place to get away with that. It brings the hip-hop into it. [Hip-hop] really influences people in isolated places like Alaska. Small towns really latch on to that, they latch on to gangster rap and Nickelback.

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“Lovers in Love”

I’ve said this so many times, but literally every record we’ve made, we got to the studio and said, “All right, now we should make a soul record.” I think lyrically it’s somewhat touched in those areas and it just really fell just full-on with this album, just being where it was written, and it was the year that we moved around a lot. We lived in towns with three other kids going to school in my grade. Everyone in the school was in the same room. I think those were the years we listened to the most radio. We always listened to oldies radio. It just made sense to go that route musically and sonically.

“The Sun”

Lyrically on this record it was fun to write about the stuff that you could imagine I thought about as a kid growing up in Alaska and just having pitch-black skies, the brightest stars, silence and ice everywhere. That song was definitely a little kid looking up at the sky every night and just thinking about what would happen. The stories that I’ve made up about people living in the sky.

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Holy shit, I’ve never told anybody this, but this reminded me of it because we were talking about people in the sky. We grew up in a place called Kennick; it’s a fairly native population and it’s a very, very small place. There’s a bar, and a liquor store and the video store that I went to when I was younger. The people in the town would say that there’s these two people that come from the stars and they live underground in the summers and go back into the sky in the winters. You could imagine what that did to a little kid. It was just like, “Holy shit!” Outside my house there were tents that Indians used to build, all of that was in the woods by my house and I just imagined there were little people living there.

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“The Home”

“The Home” is actually something that I found after I left Alaska. … I always watched things outside of the fucked-up stuff I was watching. I watched “Sesame Street” and they had communities and I always wondered, “Where’s my neighborhood?” It really didn’t make me dislike what I was doing; it made me take it for granted.

“The Woods”

All I could picture the whole time I was writing and recording “The Home” was the place around my house, like walking outside into the woods. Knowing what I know now as an adult, I wonder what was a little kid doing wandering out into the woods as a kid? All I could think about was how we would march out into the woods and explore. The chorus of that song being me taking it for granted. Me saying, “Where is my love? Where is my best friend?” when the reality is it was all right there. It took leaving to realize that. That’s where I’ll end up eventually.

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“Guns and Dogs”

I know I say it in the song, but we lived out in this cabin in Alaska. My dad had just bought a bunch of dogs from Joe Redington Sr., the founder of the Iditarod. He just did it out of nowhere, which is exactly how my family works and is probably the best example of how my family is. We went out to this place called Icy Lake. The only way to get out of there is by sled or by dogs. We just lived out there for a year-and-a-half. I was 5 and 6. Looking back on it, I was so shy as a kid, I was not looking forward to going to school. I was not looking forward to being around people. It was good. I was like I’m just with my family, we make fires, we cook food. I think it was a really good experience to me and that carried on into high school when, as kids do, I pushed away from my family.

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“Do You”

Just looking at all the instruments and looking at what [producer] Paul Q. Kolderie had done, I really wanted to reference Radiohead and the Pixies within this 2-and-a-half minute song and give him something that he had done before. It was just fun. It was so cool just giving him that and letting him run with it. You can tell there was a little bit more excitement when we hit the chorus with the huge ’90s guitar Paul was like, “OK, put the Fender away, turn off the reverb, get out the Marshall.” He was awesome to work with. This song especially was “Wizards.” Watching it, and “Fantastic Planet” too, the verses are very “Fantastic Planet.”

“Everyone Is Golden”

That song as well, I think it was more written about the tail end of this period when we moved around a lot. That was ’93 when we lived in Heli, Alaska, and also the first time I was around death. It was a younger kid [who died] at my school; everyone was crying the next day at school and I remember not knowing what to think. I remember when my cat died and thinking that was really sad, but [this] was just one of those things where I didn’t know how to handle it. It was a really weird moment in my life, one of those points that definitely shaped me in getting to this point.

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I wrote it in Alaska at my parents’ house — that and “People Say.” My mom and dad were singing that song all day long as I was trying to write it. Just having them there for it just really brought that Beatles vibe into it. The Beatles may not have been going for it, but they have a family vibe. The Beatles seriously connect with everybody. It’s hard to find a person who hates the Beatles.

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“Let You Down”

Originally I had done that on the demo, but [piano player] Ryan Neighbors is just so good and he just brings a vibe with him. It’s such a downer song and he’s just a fun person. We sat down and decided to just do it in one take and I would sing and he would do the backups, and I would play the Wurlitzer at the same time, and we just sang the song together. Unintentionally, when we set everything up, we had to stare at each other though the glass and it was funny. The whole time I was singing that song I was trying not to laugh and staring at him the entire time and just feeling it. I think it brought something else to the song that might not be noticeable when listening to it. For me, personally, it really lifted up a song that was actually a really low point for me.

“Mornings”

“Mornings” was kind of jumping back into everything and it wraps around and finds itself again. It made sense to end with it’s the morning, and it’s a new day. It was best to fully jump into the visual, which was everything I thought of as a kid. We had this inlet that was just amazing to look at. We had beluga whales that would come in every year the tide would come in. … Those are some of the visuals that come into it. The things that run through your imagination when someone fucks up at the video store and you get “Wizards.”