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08/22/2025

Forty Feet Tall Scream at 2025 So Far in Brand New LP Out Today Titled, "Clean The Cage" - Early Access Review

By Tobias Wisner // The heavyweight Portland Post-Punk rockers have come up with their best material I’ve heard from them so far. Framing the record as “a dichotomy,” the band oscillates between the dreamy and melancholic to the enraged and thrashing seamlessly - channeling the exasperation, sadness, and anger this year has brought for many Americans who possess eyes, ears, and the ability to read. The official album release show is slated for Saturday, August 23rd at The Get Down - featuring support from The Macks and Buddy Wynkoop.

Dear reader,

Like you, this year has felt like a lot to me too. 

We haven’t even passed the seven month mark yet, and it genuinely feels as though each passing day brings with it a headline that a writer at The Onion would kill to have come up with, thanking their lucky stars that such an absurd, almost comically evil thing would never happen in real life.

My feelings on those headlines are pretty self-evident if you've read my work before. So I'll let a random anecdote that I love describe the "vibes" we're experiencing from our leaders at the moment:

Anthony Bourdain, who has shared a table with Ted Nugent, as well as active members of the KGB and Hezbollah, responded with a flat “No.” when asked if he would share a meal with our current President in this old CBC News interview. He also described him as “personally objectionable” and has gone on record calling the Presidential hands “tiny little nubbins.”

By all accounts in a post-Bourdain-era that we are worse off for, those tiny little nubbins seem to be signing a lot of 'executive orders' that intend to do a great deal of harmful and cruel things to very vulnerable people in our country. Thankfully, an art form exists that is a nigh perfect invention for when the nubbins of people in power get a little too dictatorial or mean to the downtrodden: Punk Rock.

Make “Stick it To The Man” Great Again

Enter Forty Feet Tall, a local favorite Post-Punk outfit I’ve interviewed in the past, with their newest record “Clean The Cage.’ They kindly sent me an early look at the mastered version of the LP - and believe me when I say it ‘hits’ pretty damn good given the times we find ourselves in.

This project from the band is undoubtedly their best and most complete full length project, and the band says it best about its timing, subject matter, and message themselves: “If you need to let loose and forget for a few moments, this album is for you. If you can’t help but scream about injustice in our world, this album is for you.”

To me, this Saturday’s official release show for the album at The Get Down on SE 6th Ave is looking like one of the must-catch shows this year if you love good, loud music and live in and/or around the city. The stacked bill features another load-bearing band in the Rock scene here that I’ve also spoken with before, The Macks, alongside local ‘Art Punk’ band Buddy Wynkoop - a project that has been on my radar since I caught a set of theirs at The Fixin’ To in St. Johns circa 2022.

‘“Clean The Cage’” is not only excellent as a complete LP, never losing pace unintentionally, but it is also relevant, and more musically complex-sounding than the band has sounded in the past to great effect. While no stranger to a sweaty, violent, moshing crowd of which Cole Gann, the band’s lead vocalist, has been known to take part alongside FFT’s audience at shows, what’s legitimately impressive on this project to me is how deftly Forty Feet move between musical ideas, vibes, and seemingly opposing genres throughout the tracklist.

If the total-banger-status singles and the overall quality of other cuts on “Clean The Cage” are any indication, Saturday night’s proceedings are set to be one of those shows you brag to your friends about in five years, where you caught a great band live before they are shot to much greater heights than just Forty Feet above ground.

Pre-Album Vibe Assessment

Invoking a range of vibes that include but aren’t limited to: dreamy, frantic, sad, psychedelic, and tongue-in-cheek, vintage Indie a la Death Cab For Cutie and grooves indicative of the Talking Heads are juxtaposed with chugging Queens of The Stone Age-style moments of abject rage, interlaced with familiar, angular lead guitar on part of Jack Sehres that’s still pleasantly experimental in all the right places, on top of repeated infectious basslines from Brett Marquette. Cole’s vocals are also a perfect complement to the records, invoking the Joe Talbot of IDLES yelp and passion while handling more melodic, more Indie\Psych cuts incredibly well in his register.

I want to give a special shout out to the band's now former drummer, Ian Kelley, on this one as well.

While FFT has just introduced a new member behind the kit, Kelley's playing on the project sees the quality there in an even rarer form than usual. The caliber elevates the overall quality of a project that is already, legitimately, very good. An animal in every sense of the word, FFT latest addition behind the skins can hammer on a crash for what seem like epochs, deliver an insane tom fill, and then play a completely different groove on the next song that sounds just as awesome. Truly impressive stuff.

Some Personal Highlights So Y’all Can Be As Amped For This Show As I Am:

• Centipede: starts how 2025 has felt, with a long ominous droning indicating chaos to come, and the ensuing album opener does not disappoint from an energy or anger perspective.

• Bicep: a frenetic, ripping, crazed good time of a song that’ll have the people slam dancing like they’re possessed by the creator of Rock music himself.

• Castaway: a classic FFT vibes song that hits hard and sounds just as shiny and new thanks to an awesome chord progression on the chorus as it does familiar to existing fans.

• Wisdom Teeth: a big highlight for me personally, a prime example of Forty Feet bringing in 2000s-2010s Indie sounds to great effect. Definitely exhibits the ‘dreaminess’ I’ve been mentioning.

• One By One: very groovy, very Psych, very Talking Heads mixed with Fontaines D.C.

• Pay Stub: certified banger, features one of my fav lyrics on the project: “Making millions is a state of mind.”

• Clean the Cage: the title track and one of the best cuts here, invokes a ‘Songs For The Deaf’ vibe of chugging, relentless guitars and drums for a satisfying ending.

In closing, be like this record. Don’t give in to this cadre of uncool, smarmy, wannabe-authoritarian-LARPers that are trying to change what it means to be an American. Make art about it. Feel your feelings. Ridicule these reprehensible excuses for human beings in power at every turn.

Draw attention to the President’s tiny little nubbins, and how the Head of our Federal health department talks like he puts his mouth directly onto random car mufflers and inhales deeply more than 20 times a day - then leave them 'on read' when they screech at you online and move on. What’s going on around us is NOT good, but music like this is, and it’s needed very badly in the world right now.

I can assure you, Punk music will endure for a lot longer than we’ll have to endure a small man who conned his way into a big office and brought his lame sycophants.

Before the feds show up at my door, my final thoughts:

Defiant, tender, complex, hard as hell; “Clean The Cage" has it all for me, and is a genuinely impressive iteration in the band’s catalog. The horrors may persist, but so does Forty Feet Tall.

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