INDIE ROCK
PORTUGAL THE MAN
CHURCH MOUTH
**1/2
On February’s It’s Complicated Being a Wizard—a 23-minute single-song EP—Alaska-bred outfit Portugal The Man sounded like a band blazing a nervy new trail. Arty without being showy, experimental but not pretentious, the three-year-old trio stitched together a slew of intriguing ideas into a cohesive whole, progressing markedly even from promising 2006 debut Waiter: “You Vultures!”
It’s fairly disappointing, then, that second full-length Church Mouth finds PTM abandoning that spirit of innovation for a relatively straightforward blues-based rock platform. With the band alternately coming off like a less enterprising White Stripes (“Telling Tellers Tell Me,” “Bellies Are Full”), a male-fronted Kills (“Sugar Cinnamon,” “Sun Brother”) or an American Duke Spirit (“Oh Lord,” “Sleeping Sleepers Sleep”), the album’s most interesting aspect might be frontman John Gourley’s they-could-seriously-be-mistaken-for-a-woman’s vocals. Close your eyes, and you can actually picture PJ Harvey singing parts of the snappy title cut or “Shade,” the closest the disc comes to a dreamy ballad.
Taken on its own merits Church Mouth is neither terribly good nor terribly bad. With Portugal The Man’s previously showcased potential as the backdrop, though, it feels strikingly lacking in both compelling complications and beguiling wizardry.