When Fortune Feeds favors the brave, or rather, those who aren’t succumbing to despair in these uncertain times. How anybody stays the course, or even thrives, while facing potentially catastrophic uncertainty is a not-so-minor miracle to stylish post-punk movers and shakers False Tracks, who return with an LP of dark, flowing energy and pulse-pounding, melodic drama in the captivating follow-up to 2024’s Hymn for Terror.
Moving fast, as if racing to avoid the ground giving way beneath them, False Tracks rides at night across rolling topography, letting The Smiths and Echo & The Bunnymen taste the whip in propulsive, swerving, shimmering sweeps “Last Wave” and “Scattered Conversations,” the latter finishing with a storming crescendo. That’s how bounding opener “Stranger in a Stranger Land” ends, too, albeit with a bit more bite and rhythmic muscle, with its chiming guitar and pounding surf.
“Boredom breeds the end of the world” is an especially portentous line from “The Hills Have Eyes” that’s couched in gothic, apocalyptic menace, the kind Black Rebel Motorcycle Club revels in, but it turns surprisingly hopeful and uplifting, despite feeling abandoned. Somewhat psychedelic, maracas rattling away, it vibes to the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s doomed ‘60s howl, as “Shivering Planet” grooves in watery disco and dreamy ripples, a constant stream of steady, undulating beats, echoing vocals and haunting effects making heads swim in a sea of imaginary, yet strong, currents.
Mostly, though, False Tracks lock in with arrangements that somehow feel both taut and beautifully loose, the dynamic push-pull of all-out euphoria, sweetly tangled acoustic finery and a touch of ominous reckoning all vying for attention in “Insatiably Vague.” Nobody could accuse False Tracks of formlessness, not when the title track sounds like a carelessly tossed away New Wave classic from the ‘80s, sunny and pristine, like Johnny Marr strumming along with Haircut 100.
These song structures are riveted together, and False Tracks are remarkably cohesive as a unit, too, unafraid to be adventurous, living under starry, inky atmospherics and always in motion. They soar and swan dive, taking cues from early INXS, The Fixx and others of that ilk, but they’ve built their own mystery.
