"it's the fabric of our country's soul, ok... we just say ok..."
Some statements are rally cries and some are death knells. Some are both because the older I get there is the bleakest sense that we might not be able to change certain things, that even progressive improvements in the social structure in politics is something powerful people give to us to make us feel better. They release the collective dogs' leash a little more now and then to appease them. I don't believe in conspiracies, I really don't but history repeats, again and again I'm afraid. "We Can't Go Back To Normal" by the fiery alt rock, Portland based artful agitators Forty Feet Tall brought all this to the forefront of my mind. The song is super charged politico punk diatribe full of frustration, hot embers continually stoked by social injustice.
The band shares this:
"This is our most blatantly political, angry song we've made. Cole wrote the lyrics pretty freshly off of protests and it talks about very specific events that happened in Portland, as well as much broader problems that everyone experienced and continues to experience. We fell into this mantra, “we can’t go back to normal”, which seemed to synthesize it all into a sentence. Whatever so many of us considered “normal” was brutality."
The human animal is so malleable, a curse and a blessing. It allows us to adapt to things and survive but in doing so we become numb. We pay extraordinary high prices for gas because we feel powerless. We lament 38 mass shootings in this country already this year but too easily turn the channel to Netflix and forget because we feel powerless. We allow a Hitler wannabe in Florida essentially burn books without setting them on fire. It is the new normal.
Forty Feet Tall's jagged cries hit home and should for all of us. Ask yourself if all this hate, control, greed, foul muck is normal and if our complacency contributes to it.
"it's the fabric of our country's soul, ok... we just say ok..."
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.facebook.com/FortyFeetTall
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Y0hXvdIjFtKZ5UFYMAAeF
https://www.instagram.com/fortyfeettall/
Childhood friends Cole Gann (lead singer/guitar) and Jack Sehres (guitar) started Forty Feet Tall as Los Angeles teens. Influenced by grunge, post-punk and alternative rock, their hard-edged, expansive sound and high-energy performances scored them slots at venues including the Troubadour, Roxy and the Whiskey. Bass player Brett Marquette joined in 2017; later, drummer Ian Kelley solidified the quartet’s formidable rhythm section. Forty Feet Tall released a self-titled album in 2014, followed by the Red Dressed EP. Yet the band’s new material, recorded with Portland polymath Cameron Spies (Radiation City, Night Heron), eclipses their previous accomplishments. Songs like “BOIL” and “Can’t Go Back To Normal” abound with ideas, yet stay sharply focused, a la Archers of Loaf, the Killers, Pavement, or Pixies. But the biggest buzz around the band is its live show; gigs routinely climax with incendiary showstoppers that find Cole tangled up in mic cords or diving into the crowd. But their outrage is anchored in hope, and a drive to do better. Their memorable music may sound loud and confrontational, but the community they’ve built around it resonates with positivity.
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