FACS

• Wish Defense [Trouble in Mind, 2025] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Wish Defense [Trouble in Mind, 2025]
Their all-caps name adapted from the U.K. Factory label's numbering system, their renowned producer the late Steve Albini of Nirvana, PJ Harvey, and his own Big Black fame, this spare, loud, foursquare Chicago trio makes New Order sound like the Beatles and hence also makes them sound relatively conventional. Of course, a lot of the music we love fits that description. But their sixth album's irresistibly propulsive yet verging-on-abstract purity could make anybody who ever loved New Order consider putting it on repeat, reading along with the lyrics, or both. So I did the latter—once. Not that they're offensive the way Albini liked to be—there are even hints of empathy and conscience. But the next time I play it, and I expect to, it will be to lift myself from a mild existential funk—anything bigger much less warmer would appear to be beyond them. And they're docked a notch for their back-cover snapshot of an apparently male human being's legs straining tippy-toe on a wooden chair toward a ceiling from which hangs, one can only assume, a noose. A-