Chicago trio FACS have announced their fourth album, which is titled Present Tense and will be out May 21 via Trouble in Mind. The title would also make a great descriptor for the band’s style of bleak, tightly wound post-punk, but this album marks a progression into slightly more approachable music.

The album was made at Chicago’s Electrical Audio before and during the pandemic, the seeds of which were planted with “Alone Without,” FACS’ 2020 Adult Swim single. “Alone Without was the first song we recorded and we really built it in the studio” says singer-guitarist Brian Case. “Alianna [Kalaba] and I played different instruments, and I think that freedom informed how the other songs developed. All the lyrics were random phrases on a big sheet and were put together as the songs took shape, so I feel like I was collecting these thoughts and trying to figure out how to process them as a big picture vs making complete ideas in individual songs.”

The new single is “Strawberry Cough” which is the friendliest face FACS have put forward yet. It’s still pretty dark, though, with Noah Leger’s massive drums leading the charge. “Strawberry Cough is about the world of interiors, and the line between where influences come together or split off,” says Case of the song and its video which uses album covers to convey the song’s lyrics. “Going into record stores and having conversations with strangers, learning about new sounds, and finding something I’ve been looking for has been sorely missed over the last year. Seeing records spread out all over the house while working on Present Tense made me wonder how these different eras and sounds found their way into our music. I spent a lot of time trying to find the visual / emotional connections between seemingly unrelated works, and walking that back into my subconscious when writing. Sometimes the video is a visualization of the words or music, and sometimes it’s just some random themes you notice while refiling your record collection.”

Watch the Strawberry Cough video and check out Present Tense’s artwork and tracklist below.

Tracklist:
1. XOUT
2. Strawberry Cough
3. Alone Without
4. General Public
5. How To See In The Dark
6. Present Tense
7. Mirrored