The duality of “man” is a subject that has been explored in art for centuries, from writings of the Bible to Descartes, all the way up to filmmakers like Lynch, Cronenberg, & Carpenter. Who is your “true self” & what do they want? With their sixth studio album 'Wish Defense' (again for longtime home Trouble In Mind Records), Chicago trio FACS take a good, long look in the mirror to face themselves.

The return of original member Jonathan Van Herik - who stepped away from the group just before their debut album 'Negative Houses' was released in 2018 - replacing longtime bassist Alianna Kalaba brings renewed vigor & a marked angularity from the band’s more recent output. The songs still hit hard, but the approach is sideways - the roles have changed since Van Herik’s original tenure & his previous time with Case & powerhouse drummer Noah Leger in Disappears; now on bass, Van Herik was originally the group’s guitar player and features on the debut, while current guitarist Brian Case played bass. This role reversal has helped the band’s dynamic, offering up a different musical perspective than before, now revisiting the trio’s long-going collaboration with some distance and time.

Case notes that the lyrics on 'Wish Defense' revolve around doppelgängers or "doubles”, tackling the idea of facing yourself and observing your ideas and motivations. Look no further than the album’s title track; “Enter the mirror / Double walker / An intimate / Wish defense / Is it real? / You beside me / The detail / Terrifying / Abject self / Your grief / A public / Performance”. Case lays out the entire album’s theme in one stanza; Are your actions & emotions your true self? Or are they a performative aspect of that “other” person you put forward? Case says that ultimately the sentiment is “...don’t let the bastards get you down, there’s something beyond this moment, like hope - but not in the naive belief that ultimately people are good”. 'Wish Defense's artwork is also a subtle reference to 'Negative Houses' art, returning to that album’s black & white starkness & minimalism. The album’s checkerboards everywhere are offset reflections of themselves, mirrored with the album’s lyrics printed front & center on the cover. Everything is out in the open.

A final note; 'Wish Defense' is the last album engineered by Steve Albini. Two days were recorded at Electrical Audio in early May of 2024 before Steve’s untimely passing, with renowned engineer & friend Sanford Parker stepping in to finish the session 24 hours later, tracking the last bits of vocals and overdubs. Longtime collaborator John Congleton mixed the album as Albini would have; in Electrical Audio’s A room, off the tape, using Albini’s notes about the session.

TRACK LISTING

1. Talking Haunted
2. Ordinary Voices
3. Wish Defense
4. A Room
5. Desire Path
6. Sometimes Only
7. You Future

RIYL: Unwound, MBV, The Jesus Lizard, SUUNS, METZ, The Dead C, Echo & The Bunnymen, Liars, This Heat, PIL. Everything eventually turns to dust. Everyone knows this, but few want to acknowledge that our time on this mortal coil is fleeting, preferring to remain in stasis, in hopes that "the end" will pass them by. Chicago trio FACS (guitarist Brian Case, bassist Alianna Kalaba & drummer Noah Leger) have been perfecting their brand of intense, cathartic post-punk over the course of four ever-evolving albums, beginning with 2017's "Negative Houses" thru 2021's landmark "Present Tense", which saw the trio dig deep into the gaping maw of a black hole & pulling back whatever debris they could grasp onto.

Their newest "Still Life In Decay" comes as an addendum to the last album - a "post-event review" if you will. "Still Life In Decay" starts with a squall of white noise before collapsing into the band already locked into "Constellation"'s lumbering groove, with Case's guitar a ghostly presence, appearing & disappearing in washes of gauzy feedback throughout the track. FACS have never been more locked in as a unit, and "Still Life In Decay" is a decidedly more focused effort. The apocalyptic chaos that defined their previous album "Present Tense" is waved away in favor of an examination of events with cumbrous clarity. FACS are a heavy band, but they don’t necessarily FEEL like one (see side two's "Still Life", where Case's fluttering, melodic guitar lines are buoyed by the insistent, underlying pulse of the bass & drums). As a rhythm section, Kalaba & Leger dance & twist around each other like a double helix, forming the DNA of what makes FACS special.

Collectively they approach rhythm from outside the groove as opposed to inside it, creating a lattice where Case weaves guitar lines like creeping vines, which makes the moments on "Still Life In Decay" where the band DOES lock in even more powerful. When the guitar punctures the lock-step swing of "When You Say", it hits like a hammer. Case utilizes his lyrics like a person suffering from anterograde amnesia; repeating phrases & holding onto old memories in a desperate attempt to avoid the slide into oblivion. Freeform poetic missives touching on themes of resignation, cynicism, class warfare, and a search for identity & meaning in a crumbling society; A primal desire to hold onto anything in a post-pandemic barrage of sensory overload. The album is a decidedly local affair; recorded once again at Chicago's famed Electrical Audio by renowned engineer Sanford Parker & mixed at his Hypercube Studio in Chicago's Ravenswood neighborhood & mastered by Matthew Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Constellation
2. When You Say
3. Slogan
4. Class Spectre
5. Still Life
6. New Flag

Chicago trio’s fourth album in four years (ex-Disappears).

Recorded at Electrical Audio by Sanford Parker

Chicago trio FACS never stop pushing forward; they’ve honed and refined their stark, minimal scrape and clatter for four years and counting, having risen out of the ashes of beloved Chicago band Disappears in 2018 with the bone-rattling intensity of Negative Houses. The trio return in 2021 with Present Tense, their fourth album and perhaps their sharpest statement as a band.

Opener “XOUT” barrels forward like a tank, with Case’s guitar chiming like warning bells, until the climax comes crashing down, glitching out near the close. “Strawberry Cough” comes next, its fusion of corporeal playing and stately, electronic heartbeats punctured by random bursts of noise or backwards masked sounds. “Alone Without”, a track originally recorded for Adult Swim’s 2020 singles series appears next in different form; more menacing and serpentine. Side two opens with “General Public”, taking the loud/quiet dynamic as a jumping off point for the song’s unsettling seasick vibe. ‘How To See In the Dark” offers a brief respite, with its persistent, dark quietude that lingers until the song’s end. “Present Tense”, the album’s title track, offers up its first truly weird moment mid-song when the song changes mood distinctly, and the music drops out save for Case’s guitar and vocals. The album’s final track, the densely packed “Mirrored”, begins with a restrained, post-rock shuffle. The mind-scrambling cacophony that comes next takes its time to roll in, but once it does, it comes in waves, flipping back onto itself multiple times until it’s folded into oblivion.

FACS once again shuttered themselves into Electrical Audio with lauded engineer Sanford Parker to lay down the basic tracks and overdubs for Present Tense. This time, the band approached their songwriting from a different angle “Alone Without was the first song we recorded and we really built it in the studio” Case says, “Alianna and I played different instruments, and I think that freedom informed how the other songs developed. All the lyrics were random phrases on a big sheet and were put together as the songs took shape, so I feel like I was collecting these thoughts and trying to figure out how to process them as a big picture vs making complete ideas in individual songs.” Case adds ”...letting the songs go where they wanted, without steering them into what we all think a FACS album should be.” The change is palpable from last year’s claustrophobic and fried Void Moments, but Present Tense is still ALL FACS, albeit draped in a layer of haze. Paranoia in soft focus, perhaps?

TRACK LISTING

1. XOUT
2. Strawberry Cough
3. Alone Without
4. General Public
5. How To See In The Dark
6. Present Tense
7. Mirrored

Chicago trio’s third album (ex-Disappears). Chicago trio FACS have evolved very quickly in the span of their three year existence. "Void Moments" is their third & latest off¬ering; a dark & claustrophobic album with rivulets of seismic beauty peeking through the din. Formed in the wake of the dissolution of Disappears, guitarist Brian Case & drummer Noah Leger's project is the logical continuation of the trails blazed in their former outfit. Since their 2017 debut "Negative Houses", the band have reworked, retooled & reshaped their sound, and with the addition of bassist Alianna Kalaba on 2018's "Lifelike", their evolution has coalesced into something distinct. Gone is the bone-rattling minimalism of "Negative Houses"; "Void Moments" o¬ffers an abstraction of the melodic elements that crept into "Lifelike" and contorts them toward a new horizon.

Where "Lifelike" rang with a metallic, near-industrial racket, "Void Moments" cloaks the music behind a black velvet curtain of sonance, obfuscating the band's most direct set of songs to date. "Boy" kicks o¬ with a lurch of vocals and Case's sinewy guitar-line guiding a stoic march. By the time Kalaba drops in with the bass, the track morphs into a milky swirl, leading into the chiming swirl of "Teenage Hive’s buzzing churn. "Casual Indiff¬erence" expertly fuses the band's rhythmic pulse with a sombre dissolve of guitars, vocals and backwards-masked drums. "Version" closes out side one with lush surges of Case's shoegaze'd guitar & voice weaving around the rhythm section. Side two careens in with Leger's cavernous drums, with Kalaba and Case riding alongside.

The album's final two tracks "Lifelike" and "Dub Over" cascade into one another, becoming one & act as a perfect analogy to "Void Moments" mutability, both musically & lyrically. Despite its foggy presence, "Void Moments" still careens toward the light. By embracing fluidity, FACS continue to evolve & refuse to be ensnared by genre. "Void Moments" ruminates on humanity's increasing refusal of identity, not only by our increasing reliance on technology, but also within our society's challenging of societal & gender norms. "Void Moments" feels one step closer to oblivion, but its sounds are a welcome salve

TRACK LISTING

1. Boy
2. Teenage Hive
3. Casual Indifference
4. Version
5. Void Walker
6. Lifelike
7. Dub Over

FACS sprung forth in early 2017 , Brian Case, Jonathan van Herik & Noah Leger were formerly of Chicago band Disappears. "Negative Houses" is their debut recording; an abstraction of their former outfit, even more minimal and bare than what came before. "Negative Houses" approaches the stark, gothy post-punk previously perfected more rhythmically and abstract than in Disappears, with Leger's motorik, machine-like drumming taking the forefront (see the tunes 'Skylarking' and 'Others') and van Herik's guitar alternating between slashes of dissonant ambience and percussive accent. Case switches from guitar to bass in FACS, adding an economical throb to the band's drive on songs like 'Just A Mirror' & the album's centerpiece, the near nine-minute, sax-soaked tour-de-force 'Houses Breathing', whose electric heartbeat lumbers forward, sounding like an outtake from Cold Storage Studios circa 1979. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Skylarking
2. Silencing
3. Houses Breathing
4. Just A Mirror
5. Others
6. Primary
7. Exit Like You
8. All Futures