Described as a “fever dream of a record that unearths unresolved complexities of the immigrant experience in nine chapters,” The Fourth Wall’s Return Forever sees songwriter Stephen Agustin pick at the knots inherent within looking to start a life somewhere new. An attempt to weigh the cost of such an action against what is gained to come to a better understanding of the traumas buried within the process. What must be given away to make a new start possible?
The album has roots in a story Augustin heard of a relative who left a child behind when moving to the US, a strikingly literal example of what he calls the “poetry of forgetfulness” demanded of immigrants. As though to be happy in the West requires a break with your own history to create a blank slate. A willing self-amputation of those parts of yourself which would otherwise get in the way. “There was almost a way in which the impulse to revise or destroy history became a condition for achieving this joyous state,” Agustin explains. Like how his Korean and Filipino parents essentially blanked America’s history of colonisation and war over their homes in order to assimilate.
Lead single ‘Never A Part’ picks up this thread with an imagined conversation between Augustin and his grandmother. “I began to have questions about what the family connection really means,” Agustin continues. “What does it mean to ‘love’ a person merely because of their biological ties, without knowledge of the person’s aspirations, personality, style of humour, moral concerns?” With a sound at once visceral and soaring, the song pushes into the intangible strangeness of unconditional love while confronting the poetry of forgetfulness head on.
Won’t you hold me close
so I can rest assured
That there’s no words to say
that undoes all the hurt
or time enough to learn
why my love for you returns
The track comes complete wit ha video by director/cinematographer Eric Harrod, with Stephen Agustin co-directing and developing the concept:
Return Forever will be released in 2024 via DevilDuck Records.
Photos by Lisa Haagen