The Fourth Wall

05/30/2023 The Fourth Wall celebrates the release of their latest album, 'Return Forever,' on Vinyl GENERAL ADMISSION 21+: $15.00 GENERAL ADMISSION 21+ DOS: $17.00 The Fourth Wall What is the price we pay for joy, and is it worth it? The thread of this question runs taut through The Fourth Wall’s Return Forever, a fever dream of a record that unearths unresolved complexities of the immigrant experience in nine chapters. Throughout the album, songwriter Stephen Agustin circles a fire that feels so bright and yet so unknowable; there are not many answers to be found, only a disruption, the emergence of a world seen with new eyes. Return Forever was first inspired by a moment in Agustin’s family history in which he learned that a close relative had left behind a young daughter when she moved to the United States, turning away from her past life and creating one anew. Shocked though he was, Agustin soon became fascinated with the idea of the “poetry of forgetfulness.” “There was almost a way in which the impulse to revise or destroy history became a condition for achieving this joyous state.” He says. It was a theme he would begin to see over and over again: in the way he saw immigrant families assimilating into the United States, or in the way he saw his own parents and grandparents—who were from Korea and the Philippines—harbor so little resentment towards America despite the traumatic history of war and colonization it has with those countries. Lush, cinematic, and bold, The Fourth Wall paints the paradox of the exchange of joy for memory so perfectly. Driven by Agustin’s mastery of electric guitar soundscapes and the distorted, impassioned harmonies he shares with the band’s newest member Kendall Sallay, Return Forever is a journey that somehow captures the unfathomable. It is hair-raising, powerful, gorgeous. Shady Cove Four hours south of Portland, Oregon, the Rogue River flows right through the center of a small municipality called Shady Cove. This is where songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Sarah Rose and Sarah Nienaber, formerly of Candace, recorded the track that would become the name of their new project and self-titled debut, Shady Cove; this is where, in an unassuming cabin, the two seasoned collaborators began exploring desire’s revolutionary potential and the nomadic impulses borne of creative restlessness and the claustrophobia of city life. My Body Jordan writes songs kind of all the time since pretty much forever. My Body is a band name that started out as a joke that Darren made in 2011. Sometimes it sounds dancey, or sad or soft, but mostly it sounds like Jordan making songs in whatever way she’s figured out how, with members of her music chosen family to make it sound a lot better and way more fun to play shows.