Liverpool to New Jersey via five songs and several emotional disasters is one hell of a commute. Long Story Short marks Chasing The Fall’s first release on US label, Manic Kat Records; they’ve arrived with enough love, doubt, escape plans and questionable decisions to make the title feel mildly dishonest.
The EP is short, but it doesn’t exactly think small. Across five tracks, Chasing The Fall balance classic pop-punk immediacy with the kind of overthinking that usually turns up after everyone has gone home. So naturally I’m making the short story longer and breaking it down track by track.
Love Letters
“Love Letters” gets one handwritten note by the bike sheds and immediately starts picturing a future, children included. It should sound ridiculous but Chasing The Fall sell the hell out of it, bringing you back to how it felt to fall in love for the first time. The opening is all nervous trainers, borrowed flowers and the kind of confidence that exists after spending hours rehearsing every sentence in your bathroom mirror. Bright guitars paired with punchy drums keep the whole song moving with a sugar-rush urgency, the perfect way for Long Story Short to start. Then those little echoed “too fast” and “I doubt that” lines creep in like your own brain deciding now would be a brilliant time to be deeply unhelpful. “Maybe one day” lands right in the middle of all that hope and panic, right where it belongs.
Then “one day” starts arriving far too quickly. Mixtapes become missed trains, children are making their heights on doorframes and somehow “Grey in your hair but we’re both still 16” has turned up before you’ve emotionally prepared for any of it. The real gut-punch is stupidly small; “We’ll be writing our names down in permanent ink” becomes “We wrote out name down,” suddenly the future tense has packed its bags and disappeared into the night. By the time Chasing The Fall are left, “talking to your picture,” “Love Letters” has gone from teenage overthinking to an entire lifetime remembered in scraps. Turns out the ink was permanent, but the people writing with it never could be.
Get Out
Chasing The Fall perfectly capture what it sounds like at the exact moment you finally get sick of apologising for somebody else making you miserable. The verses stay tight and restless, with the guitars, drums and bass pressing in underneath “Why do I pretend I’m safe?” and “I wasn’t the problem anyway,” before that last line gets stretched out like Chasing The Fall are trying to hammer it into their own brains. Their confidence is still shaky around the edges. “Should I feel stupid? Like holy shit it’s my mistake” immediately drags all that certainty back into question, because knowing someone treated you badly and actually believing you weren’t responsible are two very different things.
“I wanna see the world, wanna dance the night away” sounds enormous against those cramped verses, with the guitars widening out, the drums hitting harder and the bass giving the whole song a thicker, more driving backbone underneath the vocal lift. That burst of momentum makes “getting out” feel bigger than simply ending a relationship; musically, the song starts sounding like the life waiting on the other side. It makes “If losing you means losing me, I would have to walk away” the line that matters the most. Staying has started costing more of yourself than leaving ever could. As the final choruses pile up, the full band push keeps getting more insistent rather than easing off, giving “I can finally breathe if I can get out” the release “Get Out” has been chasing from the start. The doubt is still there but now it has to compete with crashing drums, bigger guitars and a bassline that keeps the whole thing surging forward instead of letting it collapse back in on itself.
City Lights
There’s a reason “City Lights” was the right choice to lead Long Story Short. Written while Chasing The Fall were visiting New York and New Jersey, it catches that specific feeling of looking at something bigger than the life you know and deciding to chase it before your brain has time to list every possible way it could go wrong. “I left my hometown memories in a half drank bottle, packed my things and left to hit the road full throttle” is pure forward motion, but the song keeps letting the nerves sneak through around it. “My heart is beating out my chest, I don’t know what to do next” makes the whole thing feel less like fearless ambition and more like doing something terrifying because staying put has finally become worse.
The dual vocals are a huge part part of why it works. Rather than simply doubling everything for size, they give “City Lights” this sense of two thoughts happening at once, one voice pushing forward while the other carries the hesitation hanging around underneath. That tension fits perfectly with “Fade to grey, lost my way” before the chorus opens back into bigger guitars, driving drums and the repeated “take my shot under these city lights.” Even when the song sounds at its most triumphant, Chasing The Fall never completely scrub away the uncertainty that’s sprinkled throughout Long Story Short. The bass keeps everything moving beneath the rush, the guitars give the chorus that proper pop-punk lift and those overlapping vocals make the whole thing feel bigger without making it cleaner. “City Lights” wants the dream badly enough to chase it, but not so badly that it pretends chasing it isn’t terrifying.
Same Old Story
Nothing ruins an identity crisis like your own reflection developing opinions. Chasing The Fall spend the penultimate track staring straight at the version of themselves they’ve outgrown, with “My reflection’s changing, that guy is outdated” sounding less like reinvention and more like barely recognising who they’ve become. The guitars have a rougher edge here, while the bass and drums keep the song from sinking too far into its own head. The echoed “acted the fool” adds another little voice from the past refusing to stay buried, and “Why is nothing perfect?” sounds so much more exhausted than dramatic.
The chorus makes that identity crisis nastier. “Did I mean anything, to anyone, at any time?” already hurts before “They loved me better when I didn’t love myself” changes the shape of it completely. Musically, the chorus opens wider without turning triumphant; the guitars stretch out, the drums hit harder and the bass gives the vocals more weight. The ending beautifully folds those thoughts into one another, with the dual vocals bouncing “my reflection’s changing,” “that guy is outdated” and “Why was nothing perfect?” against the repeated “The last time I asked for help.” The two voices leave the song less resolved than reflected; for something called “Same Old Story” it sounds thoroughly sick of repeating itself.
That’s What She Said
Calling your closing track “That’s What She Said” is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid; luckily, Chasing The Fall commit hard enough that it becomes both. “Can’t pull out now when you’re nearly gone” and “You talk so big, but ya come up small” are exactly as subtle as you’d expect, but underneath them is a relationship that’s completely run out of patience. The verses are full of contradictions, from being told to “take it slow” before everything gets rushed, to being permanently in second place to somebody’s mates and still somehow wondering whether you’re the one making a mess of it. “Wrong guy, the right place” turns all of that frustration into one of Long Story Short’s more immediate hooks. By the time “I should have spoke to all your exes” arrives, asking for references beforehand suddenly seems like it might have saved everyone from a considerable amount of heartache.
“That’s What She Said” refuses to behave any better than its lyrics. The guitars come in with a sharp, bratty edge, the drums keep the whole song bouncing forward and the bass gives the chorus enough weight to stop all that sarcasm floating away. There’s a real bite to the vocals too, especially around “Threw it all in my face” while the repeated chorus turns irritation into something almost gleeful. By the time the bridge hits, “Got me hot but left me cold, I gave you more than you could ever hold,” the song has fully committed to weaponising every double meaning it can find before crashing back into one last chorus. It’s loud, petty and exactly the right amount of ridiculous for a closer with this title.
For an EP called Long Story Short, Chasing The Fall have an impressive inability to keep anything simple. Five tracks manage to squeeze in falling hopelessly in love, getting the hell out, chasing a bigger life, wondering who you became along the way and naturally, ending by making jokes about a terrible relationship. More importantly, none of it feels scrubbed clean for the sake of a tidy ending. There’s doubt inside the hopeful bits, classic pop-punk humour sitting next to genuinely ugly feelings and enough self awareness to know that figuring yourself out is usually less “important life lessons” and more “well, that was a fucking disaster.” By the end, Long Story Short still doesn’t have many answers, but at least it doesn’t pretend that’s the point. Chasing The Fall sound far more interested in documenting the mess while it’s still happening and somehow, it makes the whole thing feel more complete.