The individual members of Chicago’s Facing have been making music for a while now, even if last September’s “Water” served as the trio’s first recording together: Nathan Whitman’s resume features a period of touring as The Appleseed Cast’s bassist, Claudia Ferme established a solo career as Claude (this one, not the one on Phoebe Bridgers’ label), and Kirk Rawlings long served as one half of the art-punk duo Courtesy. Yet together they conjure an incomparably eerie energy which carries over to their newly released second single, “Undiu,” an unnerving minimal dream-pop tune that sounds like Victoria Legrand fronting The xx before the tune gets injected with elements of horror-ambient sound design.
“I wrote the lyrics for it while staying in my grandparents' cramped apartment in Italy, where the heat was cranked high because they always ran cold,” Ferme shares, likening “Undiu” to the score for a lost Italian horror film (relatedly: you know you’re in for some shit when the album cover appears to be a visual reference to Possession). “My parents, three siblings, and I were packed into the small space, amplifying a sense of claustrophobia that mirrored the uncertainty I was feeling about someone I had just started seeing long distance at the time. The communication between us was made even more difficult by the time difference. That tension—feeling stuck, unsure, and spiraling—found its way into the music, externalizing the internal in an eerie, suffocating pull.”
Check out the track below, and expect more from Facing soon.
