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Where better to meet Portugal. The Man than in Portugal the country? The American band, whose core members are from Alaska but are based in Portland, Oregon, named themselves after the home of Ronaldo and custard tarts back in 2004, just because it was the first nation that came to mind. Then they added an awkward full stop in the middle to trip up anyone trying to read about them.

Their first appearance in Lisbon turns out to be a great day in a long career that has only recently seen the sextet garner real rewards. First, they got to sleep in a hotel instead of on their tour bus. The band have played around 80 gigs so far this year, first hitting the road three days after their belated breakthrough hit, Feel It Still, won Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the Grammy Awards in January.

Then they met a senior Portuguese politician at a fancy gathering and hashed out a campaign for a Visit Portugal tourism promotion. People can send in their own versions of the latest Portugal. The Man single, Live in the Moment, and win the opportunity to perform at a music festival there. Providing the theme tune for an entire country ought to make them a pretty big deal in the Portuguese capital but as they take the short cut to their trailer through the centre of the waterfront NOS Alive festival, they go unmolested by fans. “Everybody knows the song but they don’t know us. I can still pump my own gas, which is fine with me,” says bassist Zach Carothers.

The song, though, is now very famous. “When we play Feel It Still at a festival you do see this realisation coming over about 30 per cent of the crowd: ‘Oh, it’s these idiots! I thought that song was Pharrell.’ About once a week someone sends me a video of their adorable kid singing it from a car seat,” says guitarist Eric Howk from beneath a Pantera baseball cap.

This one sounds familiar for a good reason. Its bassline is played on the same sort of Höfner guitar that Paul McCartney used in The Beatles, and the melody of the key line, “Ooh, woo, I’m a rebel just for kicks, now” is lifted from Please Mr Postman by The Marvelettes. As a result they pay royalties to, among others, Brian Holland of Holland-Dozier-Holland fame.

The whole song was written in about 45 minutes, with the Please Mr Postman melody used as a “placeholder” until they could come up with something better. They never did. “Our legal team told us that if we just changed two notes it would have been completely our song,” says Carothers. “But we didn’t like it without that melody. It had become part of the song.”

Unlike its conception, it has been a slow-burner, first released in March 2017 and reaching its highest point on the UK charts, No 3, in March this year. It ended up going four-times platinum in Canada and Australia and triple platinum in the US. Carothers says he realised it was going to be big when, in the same week, it was called “the song of the summer” on both the The Today Show and Lars Ulrich of Metallica’s radio show. “If we could get the moms that watch The Today Show and Metallica fans, we were casting the net pretty wide.”

The band might not have been expecting much at this stage. Between us we can’t think of any other act whose first hit single comes from their eighth album. But they weren’t exactly small-time, either. Since their fifth album, 2011’s In the Mountain in the Cloud, they’ve been signed to Atlantic, the same label as Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran. Producers on Woodstock, the album from which Feel It Still comes, include Mike D of the Beastie Boys and Danger Mouse, who has also worked with U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Gorillaz. They made some of it in Rick Rubin’s luxurious studio in Malibu.

Yet no one anticipated Spotify streams now approaching half a billion. “There’s a dedicated ‘alternative’ team that has always dealt with us. The pop division is very separate, with its own offices that we weren’t allowed in,” explains Howk. “When we put the record out, the conversation about crossing over into pop did not exist.”

And now they have crossed over, nobody seems to expect them to stay there. “I think we can write a better song,” says Carothers, who picks the six-minute-long Sleep Forever, from 2011, as the band’s finest moment. “But if we had $10 million and the smartest ad agency, I don’t think we could make this happen again.”

The best indie bands of all time 15 show all The best indie bands of all time 1/15 15. The Jesus and Mary Chain East Kilbride's Jim and William Reid became the prominent voices of Scottish indie after forming in 1983, releasing their debut album Psychocandy in 1987 and recording a handful of influential John Peel sessions. There’s a huge amount to discover across the band’s diverse and multi-faceted back catalogue, with seven studio albums, six EPs and plenty of compilations to get to grips with. Strange as it sounds, Jez from Peep Show summed the band’s appeal up perfectly when he compared them to his and Mark’s complicated new boiler: “It's like the Jesus and Mary Chain of central heating control systems — difficult to get into initially, but then so much to explore.” Getty Images 2/15 14. The Maccabees The Maccabees are another of the defining bands of their era – the lingering bass note that opens the band’s debut 2005 single X-Ray is enough to make the memories of skinny jeans and questionable haircuts come flooding back. Frontman Orlando Weeks had one of the most distinctive voices in the scene with its trembling vulnerability. The band’s sound matured as the years went on, moving away from a frenetic post-punk energy towards more considered art rock. AFP/Getty Images 3/15 13. Pavement ‘Angular’ has become a cliché when talking about indie rock but Pavement’s wonky melodies and cutting guitar lines embody the description more than most. The Californian band embodied a slacker spirit throughout the 90s but there was nothing lazy about the band’s songwriting craft and knack for killer choruses. Frontman Stephen Malkmus has since furthered the band’s legacy after splitting in 1999 with a series of brilliant solo albums, but fans are still holding out hope for a Pavement reunion soon. Getty Images 4/15 12. Echo and the Bunnymen Ian McCulloch’s Echo and the Bunnymen established themselves as one of the truly alternative voices coming from Merseyside in the late 70s and early 80s. Their brand of indie pop saw them experiment with psychedelic influences on tracks like The Cutter, one of the highlights of their extensive back catalogue. The band are hardly lacking in self-belief either: McCulloch called their 1984 track The Killing Moon “the greatest song ever written” in an interview with the Guardian and claimed it “contains the answer to the meaning of life”. Modesty might not be their forte but the group certain deserve to be regarded as one of the finest indie bands of their generation. Getty Images 5/15 11. Pixies Boston’s finest Pixies were pioneers of the loud/quiet rock dynamic which came to have a huge influence the 90s alternative scene. The group also understood the importance of simplicity in their songcraft and delivery better than any of their contemporaries. Zero frills didn’t mean zero thrills though. The band carved their own lasting mark on the musical landscape and tracks like the haunting Where Is My Mind and the absurdist Monkey Gone To Heaven are some of the greatest anti-anthems of the era. Getty Images 6/15 10. Neutral Milk Hotel Few indie records capture raw, unfiltered emotion quite like Neutral Milk Hotel’s iconic record The Aeroplane Over The Sea. The Louisiana group etched their name in rock history with the album in 1998, which featured lo-fi productions with distorted acoustic guitars, heartbreaking lyrics and some of the most impassioned vocals in indie rock courtesy of frontman Jeff Mangum. The singer’s performances on tracks like Two Headed Boy are utterly captivating and seem incredibly direct — like he’s stripping away all distractions and addressing the listener directly. The group never released another album but the strength of The Aeroplane Over The Sea means they retain one of the biggest cult followings in indie to this day. Getty Images for Coachella 7/15 9. The Cribs To put it plainly, any band that Johnny Marr wants to join has to be considered a very good band. The Smiths guitarist linked up with Wakefield’s finest to record an album, 2009’s Ignore the Ignorant, adding a sophistication to The Cribs’ jagged, punk-fuelled indie rock. Their earlier three albums were packed with hooks and scything guitar lines from Ryan Jarman, backed up by his brother Gary’s no-nonsense bass playing and the raucous drums of their cousin Ross. For a while they were the darlings of the indie rock world, but even as the scene began to lose its way the band’s cult following remained just as fervent. Getty Images for Coachella 8/15 8. Sonic Youth New York noise rockers Sonic Youth, made up of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo, first found a cult following amongst the ‘no wave’ art scene in the early 80s. They reached a new generation of fans after signing to major label DGC in 1990 but they never lost their edge. Despite achieving more mainstream success their constant experimentation saw them cover works by experimental composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, pushing boundaries of genre and come to redefine what it meant to be an indie rock band over the last four decades. Getty Images 9/15 7. REM REM were one of the leading alternative voices in US rock before finding mega stardom off the back of1992 album Automatic For The People. REM were one of the leading alternative voices in US rock. Their debut album Murmer in 1983 announced them as one of the most exciting talents in American indie years before they became stadium mainstays. Guitarist Peter Buck is arguably one of the most underappreciated musicians of his generation too — his shimmery, jangly style was the key component of the band’s sound alongside Michael Stipe’s unmistakeable vocals. Getty Images 10/15 6. The Libertines Deified by certain sectors of the British music press and no doubt magnified by the celebrity of frontman Pete Doherty, The Libertines are nonetheless one of the essential bands of the indie rock movement. Their music was sloppy and infectious with choruses that were as at home in rowdy, booze-soaked pub as they were in front of thousands at a festival. Can’t Stand Me Now, the first single off their second, eponymous album stormed to number 2 the UK Top 40 in 2004 (a time when the charts still meant something) and became the band’s ultimate singalong, electrified by the intraband tensions that would eventually come to derail them. Getty Images 11/15 5. The Stone Roses So much of what the Stone Roses did was iconic: the wiggling bassline on Fools Gold, the bold religious appropriation of I Am The Resurrection, even the first line of the first song on the band’s first album (“I don’t have to sell my soul, he’s already in me” from I Wanna Be Adored remains one of Ian Brown’s most memorable lines). They epitomised the Madchester movement – an explosion of sound, fashion and substances – and popularised the psychedelia that would weave its way into the music of so many huge British bands in the 90s. Kevin Winter/Getty 12/15 4. The Cure The Cure’s sound is sprinkled with glitter and gloom, bridging euphoric pop highs with dark, gripping art rock. Listening to their back catalogue is like disappearing down the rabbit hole: there’s a wealth of musical ideas and forms to discover, from starker albums like Pornography to the technicolour indie pop of The Head On The Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Their magnum opus Disintegration remains one of the most revered double albums ever too, with Robert Smith representing one the true visionaries of UK indie. Getty Images 13/15 3. Arctic Monkeys Nothing less than a British phenomenon. Their swift ascent from an unknown four-piece to one of the biggest bands in the country in the mid-to-late 2000s was astounding. The debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is the fastest selling in UK history and an indie-rock staple: audaciously clever lyrics, massive choruses and unforgettable hooks. They never stood still and were unafraid to risk alienating parts of their fan base for the sake of progression – the wholly unexpected sound and mood of 2009’s Humbug, their third album, was the first example of this. Turner’s lyrics meanwhile have gone from Mike Skinner-ish observations to those concerned with galactic hotel reservations on their latest release. That said, each album they’ve released has more hits than most bands could hope for in a career. AFP/Getty Images 14/15 2. The Strokes “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes.” So goes the first line of Arctic Monkeys’ latest album, a clear indication of just how influential the New York five-piece has been. Their first album Is This It, released in 2001, was the earthquake that shook up the next decade of rock music on both sides of the Atlantic. Its chugging guitars, beguiling hooks and swaggering, observational lyrics laid down a blueprint that countless other bands would follow. The record that came after it, Room on Fire, was quite nearly just as brilliant. The rest of the band’s discography varies in quality, but the enduring appeal of Is This It cements The Strokes’ place as one of the very best. Getty Images 15/15 1. The Smiths The Smiths became arguably the most influential British band since the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when they emerged in the early 80s, influencing and inspiring entire generations of fans and musicians alike. Geoff Travis, head of iconic independent label Rough Trade, took a punt on the band after being handed a tape by a teenage Johnny Marr and signed the band in 1983. In the space of just four years the group released four of the most influential British albums of the decade and leave an indelible mark on the musical zeitgeist. The unique vocal and guitar stylings of Morrissey and Marr respectively, as well as backing from the underrated and underappreciated rhythm section of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, made them one of the most compelling groups of the era. Marr remains an almost messianic figure for UK guitarists and while Morrissey’s history of controversial comments have caused some to question the band’s reputation, their musical legacy has never been in doubt. 1/15 15. The Jesus and Mary Chain East Kilbride's Jim and William Reid became the prominent voices of Scottish indie after forming in 1983, releasing their debut album Psychocandy in 1987 and recording a handful of influential John Peel sessions. There’s a huge amount to discover across the band’s diverse and multi-faceted back catalogue, with seven studio albums, six EPs and plenty of compilations to get to grips with. Strange as it sounds, Jez from Peep Show summed the band’s appeal up perfectly when he compared them to his and Mark’s complicated new boiler: “It's like the Jesus and Mary Chain of central heating control systems — difficult to get into initially, but then so much to explore.” Getty Images 2/15 14. The Maccabees The Maccabees are another of the defining bands of their era – the lingering bass note that opens the band’s debut 2005 single X-Ray is enough to make the memories of skinny jeans and questionable haircuts come flooding back. Frontman Orlando Weeks had one of the most distinctive voices in the scene with its trembling vulnerability. The band’s sound matured as the years went on, moving away from a frenetic post-punk energy towards more considered art rock. AFP/Getty Images 3/15 13. Pavement ‘Angular’ has become a cliché when talking about indie rock but Pavement’s wonky melodies and cutting guitar lines embody the description more than most. The Californian band embodied a slacker spirit throughout the 90s but there was nothing lazy about the band’s songwriting craft and knack for killer choruses. Frontman Stephen Malkmus has since furthered the band’s legacy after splitting in 1999 with a series of brilliant solo albums, but fans are still holding out hope for a Pavement reunion soon. Getty Images 4/15 12. Echo and the Bunnymen Ian McCulloch’s Echo and the Bunnymen established themselves as one of the truly alternative voices coming from Merseyside in the late 70s and early 80s. Their brand of indie pop saw them experiment with psychedelic influences on tracks like The Cutter, one of the highlights of their extensive back catalogue. The band are hardly lacking in self-belief either: McCulloch called their 1984 track The Killing Moon “the greatest song ever written” in an interview with the Guardian and claimed it “contains the answer to the meaning of life”. Modesty might not be their forte but the group certain deserve to be regarded as one of the finest indie bands of their generation. Getty Images 5/15 11. Pixies Boston’s finest Pixies were pioneers of the loud/quiet rock dynamic which came to have a huge influence the 90s alternative scene. The group also understood the importance of simplicity in their songcraft and delivery better than any of their contemporaries. Zero frills didn’t mean zero thrills though. The band carved their own lasting mark on the musical landscape and tracks like the haunting Where Is My Mind and the absurdist Monkey Gone To Heaven are some of the greatest anti-anthems of the era. Getty Images 6/15 10. Neutral Milk Hotel Few indie records capture raw, unfiltered emotion quite like Neutral Milk Hotel’s iconic record The Aeroplane Over The Sea. The Louisiana group etched their name in rock history with the album in 1998, which featured lo-fi productions with distorted acoustic guitars, heartbreaking lyrics and some of the most impassioned vocals in indie rock courtesy of frontman Jeff Mangum. The singer’s performances on tracks like Two Headed Boy are utterly captivating and seem incredibly direct — like he’s stripping away all distractions and addressing the listener directly. The group never released another album but the strength of The Aeroplane Over The Sea means they retain one of the biggest cult followings in indie to this day. Getty Images for Coachella 7/15 9. The Cribs To put it plainly, any band that Johnny Marr wants to join has to be considered a very good band. The Smiths guitarist linked up with Wakefield’s finest to record an album, 2009’s Ignore the Ignorant, adding a sophistication to The Cribs’ jagged, punk-fuelled indie rock. Their earlier three albums were packed with hooks and scything guitar lines from Ryan Jarman, backed up by his brother Gary’s no-nonsense bass playing and the raucous drums of their cousin Ross. For a while they were the darlings of the indie rock world, but even as the scene began to lose its way the band’s cult following remained just as fervent. Getty Images for Coachella 8/15 8. Sonic Youth New York noise rockers Sonic Youth, made up of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo, first found a cult following amongst the ‘no wave’ art scene in the early 80s. They reached a new generation of fans after signing to major label DGC in 1990 but they never lost their edge. Despite achieving more mainstream success their constant experimentation saw them cover works by experimental composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, pushing boundaries of genre and come to redefine what it meant to be an indie rock band over the last four decades. Getty Images 9/15 7. REM REM were one of the leading alternative voices in US rock before finding mega stardom off the back of1992 album Automatic For The People. REM were one of the leading alternative voices in US rock. Their debut album Murmer in 1983 announced them as one of the most exciting talents in American indie years before they became stadium mainstays. Guitarist Peter Buck is arguably one of the most underappreciated musicians of his generation too — his shimmery, jangly style was the key component of the band’s sound alongside Michael Stipe’s unmistakeable vocals. Getty Images 10/15 6. The Libertines Deified by certain sectors of the British music press and no doubt magnified by the celebrity of frontman Pete Doherty, The Libertines are nonetheless one of the essential bands of the indie rock movement. Their music was sloppy and infectious with choruses that were as at home in rowdy, booze-soaked pub as they were in front of thousands at a festival. Can’t Stand Me Now, the first single off their second, eponymous album stormed to number 2 the UK Top 40 in 2004 (a time when the charts still meant something) and became the band’s ultimate singalong, electrified by the intraband tensions that would eventually come to derail them. Getty Images 11/15 5. The Stone Roses So much of what the Stone Roses did was iconic: the wiggling bassline on Fools Gold, the bold religious appropriation of I Am The Resurrection, even the first line of the first song on the band’s first album (“I don’t have to sell my soul, he’s already in me” from I Wanna Be Adored remains one of Ian Brown’s most memorable lines). They epitomised the Madchester movement – an explosion of sound, fashion and substances – and popularised the psychedelia that would weave its way into the music of so many huge British bands in the 90s. Kevin Winter/Getty 12/15 4. The Cure The Cure’s sound is sprinkled with glitter and gloom, bridging euphoric pop highs with dark, gripping art rock. Listening to their back catalogue is like disappearing down the rabbit hole: there’s a wealth of musical ideas and forms to discover, from starker albums like Pornography to the technicolour indie pop of The Head On The Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Their magnum opus Disintegration remains one of the most revered double albums ever too, with Robert Smith representing one the true visionaries of UK indie. Getty Images 13/15 3. Arctic Monkeys Nothing less than a British phenomenon. Their swift ascent from an unknown four-piece to one of the biggest bands in the country in the mid-to-late 2000s was astounding. The debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is the fastest selling in UK history and an indie-rock staple: audaciously clever lyrics, massive choruses and unforgettable hooks. They never stood still and were unafraid to risk alienating parts of their fan base for the sake of progression – the wholly unexpected sound and mood of 2009’s Humbug, their third album, was the first example of this. Turner’s lyrics meanwhile have gone from Mike Skinner-ish observations to those concerned with galactic hotel reservations on their latest release. That said, each album they’ve released has more hits than most bands could hope for in a career. AFP/Getty Images 14/15 2. The Strokes “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes.” So goes the first line of Arctic Monkeys’ latest album, a clear indication of just how influential the New York five-piece has been. Their first album Is This It, released in 2001, was the earthquake that shook up the next decade of rock music on both sides of the Atlantic. Its chugging guitars, beguiling hooks and swaggering, observational lyrics laid down a blueprint that countless other bands would follow. The record that came after it, Room on Fire, was quite nearly just as brilliant. The rest of the band’s discography varies in quality, but the enduring appeal of Is This It cements The Strokes’ place as one of the very best. Getty Images 15/15 1. The Smiths The Smiths became arguably the most influential British band since the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when they emerged in the early 80s, influencing and inspiring entire generations of fans and musicians alike. Geoff Travis, head of iconic independent label Rough Trade, took a punt on the band after being handed a tape by a teenage Johnny Marr and signed the band in 1983. In the space of just four years the group released four of the most influential British albums of the decade and leave an indelible mark on the musical zeitgeist. The unique vocal and guitar stylings of Morrissey and Marr respectively, as well as backing from the underrated and underappreciated rhythm section of Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, made them one of the most compelling groups of the era. Marr remains an almost messianic figure for UK guitarists and while Morrissey’s history of controversial comments have caused some to question the band’s reputation, their musical legacy has never been in doubt.

They’re lifelong outsiders, happy to visit the shiny world of the mainstream on holiday. Singer and chief songwriter John Gourley, who has spoken of his “crippling social anxiety” and skips this interview, is no Bruno Mars.

Howk, a childhood friend who joined the band in 2015, looks different from almost every other musician, having used a wheelchair since a 2007 fall caused a spinal cord injury. “There aren’t a lot of touring musicians in chairs. It’s kind of new territory,” he says. “I’m working with advocacy groups, trying to find my voice in all of this, but basically the most important thing I can do is keep doing my job. There’s nothing on heaven or earth that would keep me from doing this thing that I love.”

These two, plus Carothers, are literal outsiders too, having grown up around Wasilla, Alaska. You may have heard of it because Sarah Palin used to be the mayor. Carothers’ nearest neighbour was two miles away. At one stage Gourley’s family lived so remotely that they were just a few miles from the abandoned bus where Chris McCandless, the society-shunning wanderer made famous by the book and film Into the Wild, died.

That kind of childhood makes them a bit different from most. “We’re a knifey band,” says Carothers, opening and shutting a large knife he keeps in his pocket. “What do I do with it? Someone’s always asking for one. I cut off people’s festival wristbands. I ate an apple with it earlier and looked super-cool. It’s not for protection, it’s a tool.”

When the band arrive in London for a headline show next week, he’ll be hoping not to repeat a 2009 visit when Heathrow security found an illegal butterfly knife that he had forgotten about in his hand luggage and he spent a night in jail. “The cops were cool. They knew I wasn’t a terrorist, I was just an idiot, but it took a while to sort out.”

You can take the boy out of Alaska… and as his band carry on around the world, from their Iberian namesake to the UK and beyond, it doesn’t look like one huge song will change them much. With their epitaph sorted, now they’re free to enjoy themselves.

Portugal. The Man play the O2 Forum Kentish Town, NW5, on July 24