In the public eye, Pittsburgh may forever be the “home of the Steelers,” the embodiment of a bygone blue-collar economy weaponized in Bruce Springsteen songs and MAGA agitprop alike. If that’s the case, its reputation hasn’t caught up to reality: It’s a meds-and-ed mecca where the gentrification rate compares to San Francisco, Denver, or Austin—fast enough that a young band like Short Fictions can look back on 2014 with nostalgia. “The kids in Oakland have such joie de vivre and it makes me sad because all I ever think about is dying and everything that I love in Pittsburgh is quickly vanishing or getting gentrified,” Sam Treber sings deep into the band’s debut full-length, Fates Worse Than Death, which, like Greta Thunberg playing a round of “This City’s Makin’-a-Comeback!” bingo, casts their hometown’s identity crisis in the harsh light of irreversible climate change.
“Think globally, act locally” is Short Fictions’ ethos on a political and musical level. Fates Worse Than Death is essentially emo-revival revival, a throwback to the turn-of-the-decade moment when DIY emo became too ambitious to be confined to basements across the Keystone State. Just count them among the growing number of bands for whom Whenever, If Ever might as well be Sgt. Pepper’s. Treber’s vocals are immediately reminiscent of either of TWIABP’s leads, somehow both pointed and rubbery like a sour AirHeads candy, occasionally balanced by Alex Barkeley’s harmonies or a random scream. There are trumpets, tubas, glockenspiels, and spoken-word interludes; guitars that draw equally from college rock, post-hardcore, and band camp (not Bandcamp) emo and twee; and lyrical Easter eggs that span Pittsburgh’s cultural legacy from Mr. Rogers to Code Orange.
If the familiarity of Fates Worth Than Death is the immediate draw, it also can border on a liability. “Property of Pigeons” begins with a telltale drumroll leading to an ascending twinkle riff so reminiscent of “Never Meant,” it has to be an inside joke—which would explain why they spend the rest of the song pummeling it with metallic guitar chokes and d-beat drumming. But Short Fictions evade mimicry by internalizing the most important aspect of their influences—an exploratory approach to arrangement and song structure that lends a record just shy of a half hour the conceptual heft of one twice its length. On the fantastically titled opener, “Fates Worse Than Death Pt I: I Don't Want to Wait Out the Apocalypse With Anyone But You,” Treber longs for the voice of an ex or a neighborhood that he loved just as futilely. “I’d hear it sing through apartment walls/Niagara Street, South Oakland, Pittsburgh, 2014,” he wails, before his own voice is replaced by that of an old-fashioned newscaster warning of 110-degree temperatures and “more of the same, only hotter” tomorrow.
The twisty nature of Fates Worse Than Death aligns with the band’s ambivalence over whether to muster the motivation to change the present, hope for annihilation, or maybe pull a Doctor Manhattan, living forever just to look upon humanity with distant scorn. “You should only write songs about girls and your friends,” Treber mocks on “Nothingness Lies Coiled at the Heart of Being (It’s Such a Good Feeling).” The ensuing “Really Like You” does exactly that, constructing a sweet-and-sour homage to Los Campesinos! that solidifies their bid to be grandfathered into modern emo. The pop efficiency of “Really Like You” initially feels like an outlier, rather than the centerpiece that grounds Short Fictions’ apocalyptic visions. Yet sincerity carries the day. Towards the end of the album, the band yelps together, “I’m a liar and I’m a hoarder, I love every brick and mortar in this house/And we built this home together, I could live here for forever/I’ll have money when I get older and I can love again.” The fleeting optimism is countered by the song title—“Living in Places Like These Can Be Bad For Your Health (Can’t Live Here Anymore)”—but it’s still a love letter to Pittsburgh, the people in it and those getting pushed out, who can’t live here anymore but have nowhere else to go.
