Now Playing: “False Tracks” By False Tracks
The songs on Seven Minute Demo , the debut EP by Philly’s False Tracks — a relatively new band, made up of several longtime local indie pop lifers — are united by a simple but bold limiting exercise: None of them go over the two-minute mark. And in a cultural moment of video albums and hours-long Phish livestreams, this feels like maybe one of the last truly punk ideas left. And on the track “False Tracks,” the band False Tracks aligns with another great tradition: The band that has a song that’s their name. You could argue that if a band can’t write a song that is their name/mission statement, maybe they have no right being a band in the first place. Bonus points to False Tracks, then, for not just acing the assignment but also creating the most strangely politically relevant work of jangly, post-punk indie pop maybe ever. Here’s the first verse:
What’s up there?
It doesn’t matter what
Begins to circulate in here
These are False Tracks!
Can you pick up what they’re putting down? That last line becomes the refrain, sounding like a fun cousin of the Fall’s Mark E. Smith that we’ve sadly never met. And the short-song gambit totally works, too: At 1:54 (the longest on the EP), “False Tracks” leaves ‘em wanting more as it even has a bass guitar breakdown and brilliant, Smiths-ian final ringing chord. To all of which we say this: Less “alternative facts,” more False Tracks!
