Faux Hoax Your Friends Will Carry You Home 7"

“This is for reference purposes only,” as stated in Foxworthy, one of Faux Hoax’s digital accompaniments to the otherwise two-song 7”, Your Friends Will Carry You Home.  An experimental supergroup comprised of Menomena’s Danny Seim, Gang Of Four bassist, Dave Allen, and Tracker guitarist, John Askew, Faux Hoax is a mostly Portland-centric outfit seemingly designed to accommodate the over-tapped creative freedom standby as well as to fulfill any future collaborations of the my buddy ol’ pal variety.  Faux Hoax has a core, but carries the free rein of something like Josh Homme’s Dessert Sessions, a creative discourse designed to produce and basically create something viable.  In the case of Your Friends Will Carry You Home, the results are mixed.

Of the four songs included, the single/EP’s highlight is the title track.  Sort of a With A Little Help From My Friends for the indie inflicted, Your Friends Will Carry You Home finds a comfortable groove amidst Portland musician/author Adam Gnade’s somewhat manically spoken testimonials on what friends do and how friends will ultimately end up. 

It’s a song anyone can relate to, observations like, “…you’ll get drunk and you’ll get sad and they will sit with you on grey curbs under yellow streetlights, and they’ll let you talk…  your friends will carry you home…” felt universally by anyone that's relied on another body for support.  The song has the sort of truth to it that makes you look back on however many years you’re trailing behind you and work yourself into an introspective coma.

The following songs, Hippies Will Rule and Foxworthy, owe a lot to Fugazi and Jawbox, overt funked-out bass lines and jagged post-hardcore riffs.  Well played, but lacking in terms of the experimental and interesting aspects of the previous track.  The other digital download, Underwood, is a taped instrumental played at an accelerated pace, sort of a throwaway. 

For its four tracks, Your Friends Will Carry You Home doesn’t really establish any sort of identity for Faux Hoax.  Experimental?  Yes.  Any good?  Sure, but with as little a platform as they have to communicate their objective, Faux Hoax squander the opportunity, offering one real distinguishing contribution, two decent rock songs and filler. 

But, I guess I shouldn’t read into this too much.  After all, it is for reference purposes only.