On their 2010 sophomore release Part II: The New December, Los Angeles fractured pop collective Fol Chen wrote one truly great song. Lead single "In Ruins", a spindly, exotic earworm of a track was an undeniable standout that should've played to a bigger audience. Despite encouraging remix EP (and soundtracking one of the more satisfyingly strange onscreen love scenes in recent memory), "In Ruins" still cast a long, curious shadow over the rest of the wandering New December. But with The False Alarms, Fol Chen's third LP, it seems as if the song's modest legacy can be extended a little further. The False Alarms follows "In Ruins"'s lead and homes in on the band's gift for obtuse but viscerally catchy songs, just like the one that could've launched a thousand car commercials.
"The False Alarms" opens the record with a distinct air of confidence, with Sinosa Loa's vocals fluttering at the forefront and producers Samuel Bing and Julian Wass dicing up equilibrium-disrupting pulses, clattering drums, and capering bell tones. There's a new lightness in these songs, no matter how familiar they might seem. The False Alarms boasts everything from clipped acoustic guitars to digitized harpsichord sounds to dance-kit mined beats. But this time around, everything is implemented so cleanly and economically, what was previously a bit slow and staid now feels reinvigorated. The songs are given the necessary room to breathe, as everything is placed deliberately and little is wasted along the way.
The False Alarms is just flat-out catchier. There's an impressive amount of single-worthy material, to the point where the creepy-comely "200 Words", the one they actually went with, would probably be the fourth or fifth choice for most. The early back-to-back combo of "I.O.U." and "A Tourist Town" is a particularly exciting one-two. "I.O.U." initially sounds too precious with its shy vocals and dewy twinkles, but it eventually becomes addictively slinky, thanks to its simplicity. Better is "A Tourist Town"-- a legitimate banger and an easy companion piece to "In Ruins"-- complete with Middle Eastern inflections and an "I got drunk again" chorus that begs to be featured in a loft party sequence on the next season of Girls. Other notable tracks don't garner quite as much attention, but all come equipped with welcome reference points. Both "200 Words" and the robo-spooked "Boys in the Woods" both owe a debt to Ladytron, while "Doubles" sounds like Laurel Halo trying to translate "Hollaback Girl".
Still, old habits die hard. The other half of The False Alarms, while not a complete wash, finds the band sounding lost. Detours into coldwave and seance-y Scandi-pop still feel like an attempt to steer things in a new direction, but the songs fall prey to the same kind of directionless, inertia-deprived trappings that helped sink Fol Chen's previous records. With so much engaging material sprouting up elsewhere, it feels less like an act of self-sabotage. So The False Alarms just simply isn't the record it could've been, but it's hard to complain too much when you get to walk away with a handful of fine songs.
