FACS : Wish Defense
FACS have a particular talent for carving dense, brutalist structures into sleeker contours and captivating shapes. The band’s 2018 debut album Negative Houses dwelled in cold, dark corridors, only occasionally letting in a beam of light—as when a surprisingly seductive saxophone lead breaks through the low-rumbling dirge of “Houses Breathing.” Since then, however, the Chicago trio has increasingly embraced more kinetic movement and playfully fluid grooves, finding brighter and even sexier ways to express their uniquely abstract post-punk aesthetic.
If Wish Defense, the group’s sixth album, is their most accessible, it’s a point they’ve been gradually making their way toward over the past seven years. For a group like FACS, a little evolution can go a long way, but of that same token, there’s fertile ground to explore within each step of that journey, as past triumphs like 2019’s Lifelike and 2021’s Present Tense have made clear. Wish Defense finds them as flexible and agile in their movements as they’ve ever sounded, and yet the core of their sound remains intact no matter how much wider the atmosphere around it has expanded. A song like “Ordinary Voices” is quintessentially FACS in its foundation, minimalist in its stark, underlying groove—even as Brian Case lets loose a spray of psychedelic jangle at its climax.
The sense of dynamics between Case, drummer Noah Leger and founding member Jonathan van Herik—who returned after the recording of 2023’s Still Life in Decay—remains the driving force of Wish Defense, each piece of this well-oiled machine operating at optimum performance and exceeding specifications. There’s a sharp transition between staccato riffs into a hypnotic cascade of arpeggios as Case chants a hypnotic repetition of “I’m not here!” and “Are you real?”, and then into a stomp with a little more strut and swagger. The too-brief “Desire Path” picks up a bit of My Bloody Valentine-style tremolo glide in the service of skeletal post-punk, a rising tide crashing up against a rocky shore. Similarly, “Sometimes Only” offers a mesmerizing juxtaposition of shimmering guitar and heavy, pulsing bass—heavy but never crushing, dense, but restrained, every piece meticulously placed. It’s the album’s longest song, extending into a dreamlike haze that’s hypnotic and eerily blissful, juxtaposed against the brighter and more immediate closer “You Future,” a polyrhythmic goth jam that merges early Cure with King Crimson, tuneful and gorgeous.
As strong as the material on Wish Defense is, it carries the sad distinction of being the final album that Steve Albini had been working on before his untimely death in 2024. As such, its final bits of tracking were done by Sanford Parker and mixing by John Congleton in the only way that would honor his legacy—at Electrical Audio, off the tape, using Albini’s own notes. Unsurprisingly, it’s a great sounding album in all the ways you might expect—sharp yet warm, free of digital manipulation, and with the heaviest drums imaginable. But there’s nonetheless a sense of both comfort and awe in hearing Wish Defense, an outstanding record made by people who are among the best at what they do. That’s always something worth savoring.
Label: Trouble in Mind
Year: 2025
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FACS : Wish Defense
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