Portland’s The Fourth Wall has a new album out this Friday on Bug Hunt, Tender Loving Empire’s sister imprint, but you can listen to it here first (see below). Lovely Violence is the quartet’s second album, but the first since they moved here from Hawaii.

“I’d visited Portland a few times and really liked it, and had heard about the creative community in Portland,” says singer Stephen Agustin. “A lot of bands we knew or played with in Hawaii like The Shins and Menomena told us about Portland and we decided to go there and try it out. We ended up loving it.”

They recorded all of Lovely Violence here, and according to Agustin, “a good deal of Portland is in there.”

The result is a lush, dense package of pop-rock songs with soaring, melodic choruses overlaying crafted layers of sound. “I always liked listening to records that you can re-listen to over and over, where there’s not one dominant sound that takes over,” says Agustin. “The cacophonist sound was something we had in mind making it, but we were trying to put an emphasis on lyrics and melody also.”

The whole record was recorded here in Portland by the band's four members—Agustin and fellow Fourth Wallers Kasey Shun, Paul Brittain, and Max Lilien. “It was completely a culmination of the band’s choices,” says Agustin. “It’s what we always wanted to do—have everything we want and not be constrained by time. So the creative process was a lot smoother.”

 Have a listen to Lovely Violence below and let us know what you think. 

 The Fourth Wall’s Lovely Violence is released Friday, July 31 on Bug Hunt.
They play Mississippi Studios on Sunday, August 2.