4 out of 5

Label: Trouble in Mind

Produced by: Sanford Parker, Steve Albini

While I’ve admittedly been defining FACS as a post-90 Day Men venture, assessing how Brian Case’s musical career has evolved from that point onward, FACS have been on their own distinct journey, and it’s a fascinatingly obsessive one; obsessive enough that I realize the disservice of framing the band as an offshoot of another – even if that ‘pairing’ maps interestingly with that obsession.

From their debut Negative Houses, FACS – musically; Case’s lyrics – have been zeroed in on exploring space, and self-definition. Case’s offhand, simplifications of concepts have often boiled What is Art?-type questions into occasionally eye-rolling mantras, but he’s been pushing that stream of thoughts both outward and inward, just as the group’s music has shifted from Disappears-like krautrock to more accessibly grooving post-rock, achieving in this vein by getting to work with Steve Albini (who’s passing required a co-credit from returning collaborator Sanford Parker). By the time of Wish Defense, FACS’ / Case’s wanderings are pointed as an almost violent reaction, hitting us with heavy beats and moody riffs, and lyrics are like a frustrated confession that defining existence – that’s where we’re at: “What is anything?” – is a never-ending struggle.

Everything sounds just so very focused, holding on to what is undeniably a FACS sound, just quite dialed in. Not to go back to 90 Day Men, but there is a full circle here in how that group started out more aggressive before becoming wildly progressive, and while Wish Defense is sans yelling or anything necessarily as angular as on 90s first couple releases, it is a grown-up version of that; there is no longer a sneer in Case’s vocals, and there are no plucky slownburn tracks – you get the gist right up front.

…Until, fittingly if somewhat disappointingly, concluding track You Future. Here things have the kind of laid back strum of previous FACS albums, and the tone isn’t urgent. It’s resigned. It ends with the lines ‘Youth is a thrill  / When it’s over,’ and it’s delivered with apropos emotion to that. Thematically it makes sense, but man, it takes me out of the album when transitioning from the preceding wall-of-sound buzz of Sometimes Only to this tune, and it’s thus a relative letdown on the disc.