Sometimes I get jealous of bands like FACS. They know what they do, they do it well, and they don’t fuck around too much. And when they do fuck around, it’s within a framework that ensures they’ll never not sound like themselves. All their songs are powered by the bass guitar, amble at about 120 beats per minute, and last about six minutes. The baritone (and monotone) vocals sing abstract tone poems about times that don’t seem too good. Guitars and synths enter and exit, swamped in chorus or delay without ever overwhelming the songs. FACS’ music is heavy, but doesn’t suffocate. It moves, even though it doesn’t really rock. If you’re on its wavelength, it works. If you’re not, it’s probably boring and a little noisy. On the fader between Song Band and Vibe Band (see last year’s column from 07/31), FACS are solidly Vibe. If my car’s CD player didn’t keep track, I might not know when one of their songs ends and the next begins. 

 

FACS exist in the lineage of other abstruse Chicago bands – and were themselves formed from the fuzzy, spectral remains of Disappears – but their sound is more concrete and discernible: they’re doing their take on Joy Division. Everything they release would fit snugly onto Unknown Pleasures or Substance. 

 

In this era of recombination and revival, I think there’s a purity drawing distinct boundaries on a band’s artistic scope. FACS have seemingly decided that their influences begin and end with 1979: Joy Division, Gang of Four and Wire. They don’t do garage rock. They don’t do punk. They definitely don’t do the melodramatics of the Pornography era of The Cure. They won’t really try to make you dance, but that’s an inevitable side effect of their rhythmically oriented music. FACS inspire a kind’ve narcotized two-step. Whatever you think post-punk is, that’s what they do, unadulterated, through-and-through. They’re elemental.

 

The selt-titled third track of FACS’  just-released Wish Defense begins with the bass and drums locked together in a spacious riff that’s so off-kilter you might think a note is missing. They play this simplistic figure for eight whole measures before a guitar enters and doubles the riff. After an eternity, literally one whole minute, the lyrics start. 

 

I could never. 

 

I remember the author of Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk once told an interviewer that the reason he wrote such tightly wound prose, usually involving sex or violence, is that he read his short fiction aloud at open mics in bars, and knew that to hook an audience, he needed to hit them hard and fast. I’ve never related to anything more in my life, as I got my start performing by doing the exact same thing. You wanna hook an audience: “All you need is a girl and a gun,” Jean-Luc Godard supposedly said. Instant drama. 

 

I carried that ethos over to writing songs. Big choruses, driving rhythm guitars, screaming solos. Make them dense. Don’t give the audience a chance to get bored. More riffs, more fills, more dynamic shifts, more key changes. Hit them hard. Hit them fast. An adult’s average resting heart rate is 60 to 100 BPM; double that for a song’s tempo. 

 

I figure, if you’re self-centered enough to grab a mic, you better not only have something to say, you better have an entertaining way to say it. You gotta be Donald O’Conner doing backflips off the walls in Singin’ in the Rain. “Make ‘Em [Motherfucking] Laugh.”

 

FACS don’t give a shit about that. 

 

They plod, amble, drone, and space out. Their arrangements aren’t particularly clever, their lyrics don’t stick beyond a phrase or two, and my identification with a perticular song rarely extends beyond “the one with all the reverbl” or “the one where they say ‘war’ a bunch of times.” 

 

That said, every constituent part of their sound is so tasty. The bass, when distorted, is pleasantly creamy or chugging. The drums are crisp and tight. And the guitar, while doing nothing particularly flashy, paints vivid pictures. And Brian Case’s baritone vocals, are post-punk’s ne plus ultra, Ian Curtis reanimated. Like is said: 1979. FACS knows that as long as their ingredients are this good, they don’t need to tart up their songs to appeal to an audience. O’Conner needed to lay down for three days after nailing his showstopping Singin’ in the Rain performance. FACS aren’t going to get that worked up.  

 

If you want to get started with them, you can listen to any album. I started with 2021’s Present Tense, but have come like 2023’s Still Life in Decay even more. Their earlier three albums are likely just as good, and the only reason I like them a little less is because I haven’t spent as much time with them.

You can also start with their newest, last month’s Wish Defense.  

 

About that, for here on out, FACS’ legacy will be intertwined with their fellow Chicago stalwart, the late, great Steve Albini’s, as Wish Defense was the last album he recorded. 

 

As a producer, it’s the perfect epitaph. Albini was the rarest of things, a celebrity journeyman. At the time of his death, his services as a producer could be had, if I remember correctly, for $900 a day. So it’s fitting that Albini wrapped up his career working on the sixth album of a modestly successful Chicago band. 

 

Wish Defense is a good album, one that’ll appeal to fans of the band and post-punk music in general, the type of music Albini himself created…but it’s also just another album, just another of the thousands he recordes. 

 

I’m glad FACS will continue to make music, even if Albini cannot. I’m looking forward to their next one.