Though Still Life in Decay is Facs' last recorded work with bassist Alianna Kalaba (founding member Jonathan Van Herik returned after the album was completed), at least she left on a high note. An "addendum" to 2021's Present Tense, the band's fifth full-length is one of their finest. While the titles of both albums evoke the suspense of seemingly frozen points in time, Still Life is often more present than its predecessor. Working once again with engineer Sanford Parker at Electrical Audio, Facs trade Present Tense's ...
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Though Still Life in Decay is Facs' last recorded work with bassist Alianna Kalaba (founding member Jonathan Van Herik returned after the album was completed), at least she left on a high note. An "addendum" to 2021's Present Tense, the band's fifth full-length is one of their finest. While the titles of both albums evoke the suspense of seemingly frozen points in time, Still Life is often more present than its predecessor. Working once again with engineer Sanford Parker at Electrical Audio, Facs trade Present Tense's crushing density for a roomy, live sound that electrifies the space between each instrument and the pregnant pauses within each song. That the album consists of just six tracks hints at the band's expansive playing, but even the shorter pieces are remarkably rangy. "Constellation" begins Still Life in Decay with Facs' vaporous and claustrophobic extremes: Kalaba's plunging bass anchors Noah Leger's cleanly carved-out drums, while Brian Case's blurry guitar harks back to Void Moments' hallucinatory sonics and the ways he's reimagined shoegaze since the Disappears days. Still Life in Decay also serves as a tribute to Kalaba's stint with Facs. Her fuzzed-out tone is a stroke of genius, adding seething color and texture that subtly dominates each track. The magma-like low end on "Slogan" complements the icy chime of its guitars perfectly, and "Class Spectre"'s razing drones embody the "negative power" Case sings about. The band's own negative power -- their refusal to use dynamics, space, or resolution in obvious ways -- expresses Still Life in Decay's soul-deep unease eloquently. More than on some of the group's other work, Case's voice and words channel the music's emotional entropy. On songs such as "When You Say," his anticipation of inevitable rejection ("I know it's coming/I can't change that") hangs in the air as the music prickles and churns around him, stretching the moment to the breaking point. As on Present Tense, the last two tracks blow Still Life in Decay wide open. "Still Life" is a beautiful ruin, its corroded tones and sweeping chords echoing Case's alienation before transforming into a hovering sound-world of cresting reverberations that rival EVOL- or Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth when it comes to poetic noise. Facs sustain this mood on "New Flag," a ten-minute excursion into broken majesty that features soaring, trumpet-like melodies, backwards guitars, and a ferocious breakdown, then ends with amp buzz that pulses like a heart. As noisy and fractured as it gets, Still Life in Decay is executed with crystalline vision and haunting impact. It's the moment where Facs evolve from an impressive band into a transcendent one. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi
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