Portugal. The Man Celebrates New Album with Intimate Grog Shop Show: Review

It’s 2008. I’m 14 years old. I’m scrolling through Tumblr’s homepage on the family computer and come across some blogger’s recommendation list, which includes the song “Stables and Chairs” by a band called “Portugal. The Man.” I listen, and then I listen to more. The band has an upcoming show at a venue in Cleveland called the Grog Shop, and I ask my parents if I can go. They say I’m too young. Understandable. And I’m still too young when the band tours to the same venue again in 2009. I miss out on these early, up-and-coming shows.

It’s 2025. I’m 31 years old. I’m in the Grog Shop. Portugal. The Man is here again, somehow, as a part of its Lords of Portland tour. It’s been 17 years since the last time they played here, according to Setlist.fm records. I’m giddy.

It feels surreal, as hundreds of fans escape the light snow outside and cram into the room on the night before Thanksgiving. A lot has changed, for PTM, since its early days. It landed a crossover hit, and a Grammy award, for the song “Feel It Still” off of its popular 2017 album Woodstock. It put out 10 far-ranging albums, starting from the proggy debut Waiter: “You Vultures!,” and leaning into psych-rock with The Satanic Satanist, and an indie-pop direction on Evil Friends.

And then there’s Shish: the band’s most recent output, released just a couple of weeks ago. The album returns to experimental form, with an edge. Performed live, Grog Shop attendees get a solid sampling of the project with a hardcore jam, “Pittman Ralliers,” while intense guitar solos and riffs hide around the corners of more approachable tracks like “Mush” and “Knik.”

Beyond the new project, the Grog Shop show features a sampling of PTM’s many eras, including performances of the bright, groovy “The Sun,” the poppy “Creep In a T-Shirt” and “Evil Friends,” and the heartfelt “Created.” 

The venue is, predictably, packed — and it’s packed in time for opening act La Luz to share its surfy, catchy tunes with the crowd. Parts of the floor are congested by the time Artists Against Apartheid introduces PTM to the stage. When standing in the back of the venue, it’s challenging to get a clear line of sight of John Gourley or Zoe Manville, the band’s husband-and-wife primary members.

Through the crowd of bobbing fans, we instead catch glimpses of the band members performing in front of the Grog Shop’s red curtains. 

On this tour, the band could have played at some of Cleveland’s bigger venues. In past tours, it’s filled the Agora, Public Auditorium and the House of Blues. It headlined WonderStruck music festival in 2021. But instead, PTM intentionally chose a throwback, intimate venue to play for just a few hundred people.

It’s not the first band to be drawn back into spaces like this. In recent years, Panic! At The Disco hosted a 2018 show at the Grog Shop, with a line of fans wrapping around the Coventry neighborhood. Cleveland native Machine Gun Kelly also took over the venue with his maxed-out “Mini XXmas” show in 2023. Back in 2021, Rise Against played an intense warmup show at the Beachland Ballroom. There were two major, jam-packed concerts at Downtown’s House of Blues in recent years: Foo Fighters (2021) and Green Day (2015), who both performed ahead of their inductions into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

There’s something special about seeing a big band perform in a small room, returning to its roots in a space that clearly meant something to them. It goes without saying that it clearly means something to the sold-out crowd in Cleveland, too.

It was a little extra special to me, anyway. It was as though 13-year-old me and 31-year-old me were both in the room, hearing the music that I grew up with, in the same exact space I had hoped to be all those years ago.

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