54•40 “PORTO”

54•40 ANNOUNCE LP PRE-ORDER

Legendary Canadian rock band 54-40 return with their highly anticipated new album “PORTO” set for release on January 23, 2026. Fans can pre-save or order the album now with CD and vinyl editions available exclusively at the band’s concerts. The announcement follows the debut of four powerful new singles, “Running for the Fence” ,”Die To Heaven”,”Time Will Tell”, and and “Virgil, released today, marking the beginning of a bold new chapter for one of Canada’s most celebrated bands. Frontman Neil Osborne describes the project as “an album about renewal and resilience —it’s about the work it takes to keep creating, to stay connected, and to keep loving what youdo.” Bassist Brad Merritt adds, “We’ve always tried to write songs that feel honest and grounded in real life. These new tracks capture that — they sound like where we’ve been, but also where we’re going.”

Sometimes a creative endeavour seems to take on a life of its own, with the artist merely acting as the conduit through which the art finds its way into the world. That was the case when 54-40 began to create its 16th studio album, Porto, with producer Warne Livesey. According to singer-guitarist Neil Osborne, everything just sort of clicked into place. “It seemed like it was writing itself, in terms of the whole making of the album,” Osborne recalls.“Everything was very quick and instant and immediate. And maybe that’s based on our experience of learning how to not overthink things, I don’t know, but it just seemed like there was a wind in our sails right from the get-go, from the lyrics to the music to getting Warne on-board to pre-production.”

When it came time to record, the long-running B.C.-based band decamped to the Portuguese city of Porto, from which the new album takes its title. Setting up shop at Arda Recorders for a couple of weeks, Osborne and his bandmates—guitarist Dave Genn, bassist Brad Merritt, drummer Matt Johnson—maintained their forward momentum, in spite of a massive power blackout that took the entire Iberian Peninsula off the grid for a day. “Recording in Porto was an amazing experience,” Merritt says. “The studio and staff were superb. It was nice to be able to make another recording with the great Warne Livesey, and it was a bonding experience that won’t soon be forgotten.”

The city of Porto also made it onto the LP’s cover art, which features a photograph of the Ponte de Dom Luís I, an iconic bridge that spans the Douro River. Look closely at that photo (which is actually a composite of images captured by both Genn and Livesey) and you’ll see a lone figure walking over the bridge and carrying an umbrella. That’s Osborne, who made the daily pilgrimage from one side of the river, where the band was staying, to the other side, where the studio is located. “Normally that bridge is covered in tourists, and there’s buses going by, and below there’s a train that goes by, so it’s one of those rare moments where it’s the isolated guy on the bridge with the umbrella,” he says. “The funny thing is, about three minutes after that, the wind blew my umbrella and inverted it and broke it right up, so I was completely soaked when I got to the studio.”

Umbrella-related misadventures aside, 54-40 was firing on all cylinders, and made the most of its time at Arda Recorders. “We got it all done in 11 days, so that’s a record for us,” says Osborne, who reveals that the modus operandi with Livesey was capturing the sound of a band playing live in a room. “The album was recorded incredibly quickly, with the bed tracks—drums, bass, both guitars, and some keyboards—recorded with the band playing live in the studio,” Genn recalls. “That’s how 54-40 records most of the time, if possible, but this time we really made sure we were prepared to get great performances with great sounds so that we didn’t need to replace anything later. As a result we feel we’ve captured an energized and immediate-feeling record.” As Merritt succinctly sums things up: “Everything that we put into the process came out in the result.”That result is a fresh batch of 11 songs as raw and urgent as anything in the 54-40 catalogue, while retaining the impeccable craftsmanship that made the group one of Canada’s most iconic rock acts.Founded by Osborne and Merritt in the Vancouver-area suburb of Tsawwassen in 1980, 54-40 rosethrough the indie ranks to become one of the best-selling Canadian bands in the country. The group’s discography includes three Platinum-certified LPs and an impressive string of singles including signature tunes like “I Go Blind”, “Ocean Pearl”, “Since When”, “One Day in Your Life”,“Nice to Luv You”, “She La”, “Lies to Me”, and “Love You All”.Among the future classics on Porto is “Go Get ’Em”, a hard-charging rocker driven by a crunchy riff and featuring a rip-it-up guitar solo and a chorus chant just begging to be shouted out by audiences in concert venues from coast to coast. In marked contrast is “Thank You Mother”, which continuously builds from gently jangly arpeggios to a steadily driving beat topped with an indelible vocal line and keenly melodic saxophone courtesy of David “Oz” Osborne (Neil’s brother). “Running for the Fence” is quintessentially 54-40—catchy enough to become an instant earworm, albeit one that rewards repeat listens with its incisive lyrics drawn from Osborne’s experiences with Jungian analysis and the writings of psychoanalyst James Hollis. “Running for the Fence” is rooted in the Jungian notion that we each carry our parents’ unlived lives inside us. The album-closing “Work Not Worry” (which very nearly gave the project its name) invites the listener to confront the reality of living “within a system that slowly kills/And cheapens our existence”—and to consider that there are alternative paths.“Throughout all of this journey that is the record, the idea is: don’t freak out, don’t be depressed, don’t despair, don’t be cautious,” Osborne offers. “Just get to work. Get to work. There’s always something to do.” Porto is a 54-40 record, however, which means that, heady lyrical themes aside, the songs are powerful enough to stand on their sonic merits alone. For his part, Osborne doesn’t mind if the average listener is just looking for a killer rock ’n’ roll album and doesn’t necessarily align with his particular view of the state of the world or share his interest in the theories of Carl Jung. “With the exception of our last record, which was a humorous take on talking about ourselves—our COVID record-—most of our stuff has a lot of layers,” he says. “If you want to get deep, it’s there; if you want to know where I’m coming from, you can ask me. “Other than that, we hope that you just like the tune and it’s catchy and it’s got a vibe that makes you feel good.”

photo: Warne Livesey

photo: Trevor Cornish