Chicago-based post-punk outfit and JOVM mainstays FACS‘ sixth studio album Wish Defense is slated for a February 7, 2025 release on CD, cassette, black vinyl and a limited white vinyl variant while supplies last [pre-order] through Trouble In Mind Records. 

The album marks the return of original band member Jonathan Van Herik, who replaces longtime bassist Alianna Kalaba. Van Herik’s return to the band reportedly brings renewed vigor and a marked angularity from the Chicago-based outfit’s more recent output. While the songs still hit hard, the approach is sideways; in fact, the roles have changed since Van Herik’s original tenure and previous time with Case and Leger in Disappears. Now on bass, Van Herik was originally the band’s guitarist while Case, the band’s current guitarist, played bass. The role reversal between Case and Van Herik has reportedly helped the band’s dynamic, offering a different musical perspective than before, while revisiting the trio’s long-held collaboration with some distance and time. 

Tragically, Wish Defense is the last album engineered by Steve Albini. Two days of sessions were recorded at Electrical Audio in early May, before Albini’s untimely death. Renowned engineer and friend Sanford Parker stepped in to finish the session 24 hours later, tracking the last bits of vocals and overdubs. Longtime collaborator John Congleton mixed the album’s material as Albini would have, in Electrical Audio’s A Room, off the tape, using Albini’s notes about the session. 

Thematically, the album focuses on the centuries old subject of the duality of man. Who is your “true self” and what do they want? The album sees the band taking a good long look in the mirror to face themselves. As the band’s Brian Case explains, the album’s lyrical content revolves about doppelgängers or doubles, tackling the idea of facing yourself and observing your ideas and motivations. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release next month, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

• “Wish Defense,” the album’s title track. Anchored around an angular and forceful bass line from Van Herik, off-kilter and propulsive rhythmic patterns from Leger and Case’s squiggling and chiming guitar lines while featuring one of Case’s more melodic vocal turns in some time and a slow-burning, noisy coda. The song also continues the Chicago-based outfit’s long-held reputation for writing material that’s psychologically probing with Case laying out the entire album’s theme in one stanza, asking the listening — and in turn, himself: Are your actions and emotions your true self? Or are they a performative aspect of that “other” person you put forward into the world? Case says that ultimately, the sentiment is ” . . . don’t let the bastards get you down, there’s something beyond this moment, like hope — but not in the naive belief that ultimately people are good.”
• “Desire Path” a song that sees the band pairing woozy and swirling guitar textures, squiggling guitar bursts and a punchily delivered mantra-like lyric paired with a forceful and percussive rhythm section. The song evokes a claustrophobic sense of unease; of walls both psychological and real closing in on you. 

Wish Defense’s third and latest single, album closing track “You Future” continues a run of tense, uneasy yet psychologically probing material anchored around an expansive song structure that reminds the listener of the individual musicians remarkably expressive, forceful playing.

Thematically, the song sees the band asking ‘Are you the same as you were?” “The final track is also the final action, look in the mirror and ask the questions. It’s a future self talking to a ‘you’ from the past, assessing the path up until this point, questioning who you are,” FACS’ Brian Case explains. “We bookended the album with the two songs that felt the most vulnerable and I think that really works with this idea of examining and challenging who you are and the perception of who you are.”

The accompanying video draws from the album’s cover art as it features the checkerboard motif and eyes that constantly peer back at the viewer.