This week I have new releases from FACS, MIKE, and LUMP. Today the semi-intentional theme was, obviously, ALL-CAPS FOUR-LETTER NAMES! Interestingly enough, I already reviewed MUSH in an earlier roundup and let’s never speak of that unpleasantness ever again.

FACS – Present Tense
(May 21, 2021)

FACS is a three-piece based out of Chicago who carry the torch of the darker side of post-punk and post-hardcore well into the 21st century. Officially coming together in 2016, the already-prolific band has released four albums in four years starting in 2018. Their latest, Present Tense, is the first album I’ve heard so far from them.

Being astutely well-versed in this particular genre, I tend to be hyper-critical. With their clattering, scratchy riffs, I hear a lot of the noisy industrial sensibilities of early Sonic Youth. With the sardonic vocals, I hear a lot of Steve Albini (more Shellac, less Big Black). To a lesser extent I also hear elements of Unwound, Slint, Gang of Four, the Jesus Lizard, and Polvo. All that stuff is kind of in the same camp.

After listening to Present Tense over and over, I’m left simultaneously appreciating what the group is doing here and fully emotionally underwhelmed. While I pretty much love every band that FACS is drawing their inspirations from, the nagging feeling that the project is nothing more than a heterogeneous mixture of the sum of its parts infringes upon my enjoyment. All I hear are Sonic Youth, Steve Albini, Unwound, Slint, Gang of Four, the Jesus Lizard, and Polvo, but I don’t hear FACS.

Since this is the fourth album and the band’s sound doesn’t seem to have elevated beyond its influences by now, that doesn’t bode well for my confidence that I’ll enjoy their other three albums very much either. Sorry, FACS.

Early Verdict:

MIKE – Disco!
(June 21, 2021)

I love the idea of a rapper named Mike who decided on a stage name of “MIKE”. There’s something endearingly no-frills about that. Add to the fact that, in every single picture of the guy, he looks like nicest, happiest, most impossibly stoned individual on the planet. I can’t find anything to dislike!

MIKE isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. His childhood was fraught with social anxiety and depression, complicated further by his family’s perpetual uprooting and relocating to completely new cities during his impressionable years. He looks to music to ground him as the only constant in his life.

Disco! is my first MIKE experience, and upon listening to the album the late, great MF DOOM kept coming to mind. Not with respect to flow and rhyme, of course, since the idiosyncratic DOOM was one of a kind there. But there’s this lazy, free-association flow over peppy and deceptively simple melodies that sound like cuts off of DOOM’S Mm..Food. A lot of these melodies have this happy, sunshine-y ’70s jazz fusion vibe while MIKE slurs his lines overtop. All the while it maintains this bedroom lo-fi aspect that keeps the music coated in a humble veneer.

Unfortunately, I really don’t know enough about MIKE to know how this album emotionally progresses from his yearly June 21st release check-ins, which tells me one thing: I need to listen to the other MIKE albums. And if I’m thinking that, then it’s a positive.

Early Verdict:

LUMP – Animal
(July 30, 2021)

“She’s Lump, she’s Lump, she’s Lump/She’s in my head/She’s Lump, she’s Lump, she’s Lump/She might be dead“

Laura Marling, who I know, and Mike Lindsay, who I DON’T know, team up for a collaborative project entitled LUMP. I’m not sure about the name, since I wouldn’t describe this music as particularly lumpy. But then again, what is? Frank Zappa’s Lumpy Gravy?

This is the duo’s second album, and the first word I’d use to describe the sound is “pleasant”. I know Marling’s solo music is mostly of the singer-songwriter acoustic indie folk ilk, and a lot of that is here with some very interesting mellow electropop flourishes that remind me of ’90s dream pop acts like Stereolab, Broadcast, Pale Saints, and a little Yo La Tengo. What I like about Animal is that the acoustic folk and the electropop elements are so seamlessly intertwined that it sounds more natural than one would think possible. It almost feels like they graduated from the Brian Eno school of tasteful and accessible electronic textures, which is the highest of compliments.

I’m not in love with this, though, for reasons my brain knows less about than my gut. The melodies aren’t very strong, and the arrangements, while diverse, aren’t vibrant enough for my grumpy ass to get completely gung-ho about. Still, I’m tempted to check out their self-titled debut and reevaluate the whole project at another time.

Early Verdict: