Forty Feet Tall

It was the dead of summer in Portland when members of Forty Feet Tall lured their friends—with the promise of free beer and pizza—into a gutted four-story house and convinced them to dance, masked and blindfolded, in the pitched-roof attic.

“That explains why people are so sweaty, because it was a million degrees up there,” says Haydn Cieri, who directed, shot and edited the band’s music video for their single “Cavalcade.” “Start at the bottom and spiral up as things get weirder,” were the instructions he was given, and he ran with it.

The video follows the band members, initially clad in white, as they get indoctrinated into an unknown cult of the faceless and brainwashed. The last thing you see is a mask being put over the lens of the camera as you realize you, the viewer, have been inculcated as well. The imagery is as off-kilter and unsettling as the message of the song itself. Lead singer and guitarist Cole Gann was inspired to write "Cavalcade" after reading an article about Donald Drumpf wanting to put on a military march. “They’ll lead you on, hounds on a chain, they’ll sing you to sleep and tattoo your brain,” Gann sings, backed by powerful rock that it is easy to imagine marching to mindlessly.

Yet, the workings of the song are anything but mindless, its trajectory moving from high-energy fuzz to melody and back again, ultimately descending into discordance. The ability to manipulate the highs and lows of a song, to find the perfect balance of nuanced vocals and guitar solos that go hard, has always been a strong point for the band, and this is no different in their latest iteration with new bassist Brett Marquette. In fact, experimenting with “the dynamics of going quiet and loud, soft and big,” as Marquette says, is precisely what they are currently interested in. “One of the new songs we have starts with one instrument, then gets louder and louder with more coming in, a continuous build that never repeats. It’s just an always evolving song, and that’s really fun.”

Still, when it comes to genre, they won’t be put in a box. “I do think we have a hard rock base, but then we go from there to get more of the punk and indie influences,” says guitarist Jack Sehres.

Originally from Los Angeles, the band has already been influenced by the Portland music scene, something they readily admit. “It’s definitely more do-it-yourself stuff here,” drummer Steven Driscoll says, “and more pop influenced, which I think we have shied away from in the past. But we have a couple of new songs that have more pop sensibilities, which I think is an influence of where we are.” Gann agrees, calling the Portland music scene “a bit of a collective” and pointing to the value of getting to see the “underbelly” of a close-knit musical community, an experience they didn’t feel they had in LA. - Vortex Magazine

Tacoma’s iconic garage band Girl Trouble will headline Saturday’s Rock Against Trump in Olympia, an ambitious concert aimed at increasing awareness of what immigrants and refugees face, registering young voters, and raising money for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

And Capital High School senior Spencer Rex made it all happen — with a little help from his friends.

“After Mr. Trump was elected, I found myself on Twitter a lot complaining,” Rex, 18, told The Olympian. “I wasn’t doing everything I could be doing. I thought, ‘Let me use something that I know about, which is the music business, and let me do something creative and different.’ ”
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Besides Girl Trouble — which has been rocking the Northwest and beyond for more than 30 years and has opened for the likes of Nirvana and The Sonics — the lineup includes Portland hard rockers Forty Feet Tall, Seattle psychedelic folkies Littlespirits, and Seattle hip-hop outfit Cosmos, the 2016 winners of MoPOP’s Battle of the Bands.

“We had a very, very long list,” Rex said of the process of securing bands. “We got a lot of nos before we got yeses.

“We are really excited because each one represents a different genre, a different feel and a different demographic and that’s what we wanted,” he said. “The immigrant community is very all encompassing. We want that to be seen.” - The Olympian

There is something ever so bitter about the lyrics but also so freeing. As sometimes you just have to walk away, other times you just have to watch the other walk away. This feels like more of a ballad to women in shit relationships then an attack on men per say, it’s no You’re so Vein, but it’s much better musically, being heavy on riffs as most of their music is. It reminds me of Hendrix with less blues and Neil Young without the voice and with four kids in their early twenties from LA. It’s raw and passionate, it’s well recorded, and it’s poppy but gritty and not overly catchy or soft. It’s a direction I wish more bands took as you can hear the many influences shining through of Jack White, Modest Mouse, and Built To Spill, as well as even harder bands like The Pixies or Soundgarden who can change tempo and transition rythmically very well with a great Drummer (Steven Driscoll), Bassist (Brett Marquette), and second guitarist (Jack Sehres). These gentleman are as kind as can be and will definitely be on my radar going forward so check out there social media sites and Bandcamp to find more. I got to see them live at one of the last performances at Ash St. Saloon which was bitter sweet as it was such a mainstay in Portland for so long.
Their newest single Cavalcade is possibly their best work yet with incredible time changes and breaks between the more garage fuzz sound that they are seemingly diving head first into now, but with their own style and with legible and legitimate lyrics that flow perfectly with their sound. Still bluesy and reeking of the white stripes but we all know that smells so good you can taste the gritty goodness between your grinning teeth. Beneath it all these guys are young but not dumb, they are pumping out singles like there’s no tomorrow because in this day and age, there may not be. - Lysergic Sound Department