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May 08, 2025 Web Exclusive By Scotty Dransfield

FACS’ sixth LP, Wish Defense, is a study in restraint, disorientation, and elemental power—an album that refuses to chase resolution in favor of sculpting tension into form. With the return of original member Jonathan Van Herik (now on bass), the Chicago trio sounds more distilled than ever, as if chiseling away at everything extraneous to uncover their clearest musical identity yet.

Much has already been said about Wish Defense being the final album engineered by Steve Albini before his death last year. Fittingly, the production does not draw attention to itself—it serves the band’s vision with Albini’s signature fidelity to rawness and space. You hear everything: the humming low-end and the chiming guitar effects, in particular. But the production especially highlights this album’s strange presentation, where every track is like an object, a sculpture—angular, minimal, with surface and texture.

FACS craft their songs from solid parts: each track is shaped from repeated instrumental motifs that shift with strange logic. The title track is a standout: a claustrophobic swirl where vocalist Brian Case repeatedly chants “I’m not here” like a mantra trying to exorcise the self, fittingly embodying the album’s theme of self-examination and mirror work. On “Sometimes Only,” the penultimate track, a deep-groove bassline and spiraling guitar lines conjure a slow trance, easy to disappear into.

Fans of later Sonic Youth, Joy Division, or Low will find familiar hauntings here, but FACS have quietly and resolutely become their own entity. Wish Defense is stark and elegant—a post-punk record that stares straight into the black reflection and sculpts it into something solid. (www.wearefacs.bandcamp.com/music)

Author rating: 7/10