Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0060 (January 17, 2025)

Not much to say today as a preamble to the work, but I’m really grateful for all of you who read this. I’ve never really been able to quantify my audience before, and I’m certain it’s smaller than the count of those who used to follow me in the Tumblr era, but it’s the concentration of you, and the feedback I get, that is making me come back here several times a week to check how it’s going and giving you what you’re here for.

Things may be about to get really fuckin’ stupid in America but you can always come here for some balance in what ways you should be treating your ears. Today’s reviews showcase five bands that were faced with challenges, self-imposed or otherwise, in making their newest works. Keep those challenges in mind when you find yourself at the end of your tether.

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Here’s the freebie; four more beyond the wall.

FACS Wish Defense LP (Trouble in Mind)

(Out Jan. 24th) Last spring, right before FACS headed into Electrical Audio to record their sixth album, they played the album in full at a last-minute rehearsal show in the tavern room at Color Club, a nascent all-ages rental venue on Chicago’s Northwest side. It remains one of their most exciting sets I’ve seen to date, partly because we were all hearing these songs in full for the first time, and partly because of the expectations set – talking with their guitarist Brian Case, who I’ve never seen even remotely shook about anything, seemed anxious as he explained, in so many words, that as part of the deal to record an album with Steve Albini, they had to be able to compose and track songs without the luxury of puzzle-piece digital editing. This isn’t some sort of dig; tons of bands afford themselves the luxury of modern digital recording and playback technology, but this stipulation presumably had them writing songs in a way its members would have done back in the ‘90s, testing out their mettle as a challenge to how they’d developed as a band apart from the ways in which that band could be. 

We lost Albini in the midst of their studio time, after the tracking was completed, with one day left to finish. FACS called on the collaborators who made their previous albums (Sanford Parker, John Congleton) to help them finish up, but the weight of this tragedy surely loomed over whatever time was left, an understanding that this was the last music Steve would record. This isn’t going to dovetail into any meaning behind what happened, but the studio chief’s insistence to push them into a different corner, after the pandemic-deprived smear of Present Tense and Still Life in Decay, serves as a spiritual hotfoot, the fire truly under their asses. They’ve made their most urgent-sounding album to date, and a return to the songforms from 2020’s Void Moments that’s strengthened by the in-room interplay between Case, drummer Noah Leger and bassist Jonathan Van Herik. Bass lines don’t drift here, but snap in place concisely around drum figures. Case’s Pandora’s box of effects pedals is still part of the plan, but how he drops down out of them to play off his bandmates results in a more concise, arguably tighter sound than they’ve ever had. FACS still sounds like FACS, but through ways in which they’ve never had to lean on in this band, Wish Defense is as close to a full reinvention as we’re gonna get, and an exciting jumpstart to an uncertain time. The band is smartly about to tour Europe so look out for them over there in February, with US dates in the spring.