The Faint

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then The Faint's new album, Fasciinatiion shows the band as sycophantic self-lovers. Ten years after The Faint's first album Media, The Faint return with an album rife with familiar references to their contemporaries, early Nine Inch Nails, Gang of Four, and yes, The Faint.

In 1999, The Faint emerged as a new-ish sound, spearheading the dance-punk flare that briefly immolated the underground scene. They joined as a member of the largely nonexistent Omaha scene (see also Bright Eyes). Their fifth album—and first on their own label blank.wav—mostly lacks the punch and innovation of their previous works.

Fasciinatiion begins with the familiar crunchy distorted bass, arpeggiated synth lines, and disco drums that snuck their way into the last few Faint endeavors. Yet, the rawness of 2002's Danse Macbre and the multilayered productions of Wet From Birth are missing from this album. And of course, there's the single "The Geeks were Right," which is really, well…dumb. Very rarely do lyrics ruin a song, but this is an exception. Typically vocalist Todd Fink (formerly Todd Baechle, who changed his name after marrying Azure Ray singer Orenda Fink) creates interesting and edgy lyrics that separate The Faint from other dance-punk poseurs—but not this time. Seriously, "The geeks were right?" Actually, they weren't right on this track.

Although the rest of the album would be good material for another band, for a Faint album, it's largely forgettable. By and large, the album suffers in comparison to The Faint's other work. There are few moments that shine through. "Machine in the Ghost," maintains the good parts of their older material by putting more space in the drums and yielding a track that could've been a b-side from the Wet From Birth sessions. The song builds one measure at time, layering digital manipulations, buzzing and pulsed-out bass on top of one another, until the track burgeons with activity and explodes into a dance-rocker.

"Fulcrum and Lever" actually is a bit "gangsta" (as the kids say these days) with a low-slung slow shuffle, deep bass drops and pseudo dirty south hi hat hits. A goth rock Lil Wayne? Missy Elliot meets Trent Reznor? Maybe those descriptions are a stretch, but the song does push the band's sound into a new and interesting direction. Then there's "Psycho," which brings together The Cars with Gang of Four spouting out a good-enough pop song that would be the best song by your best friend’s band. But it's still not a Faint song.

For Faint fans, this album sounds like a Faint cover album. Caught in some post-modern Moebius strip, this album sounds more like the myriad of bands that have copied The Faint's sound in the early 2000's. For newcomers, this may be a welcome departure from much of the musical refuse eschewed by mainstream radio, but essentially it is an ineffectual attempt to reinvent the wheel.

—Drew Tewksbury
08.25.08

After a four-year break that involved building their own recording studio and setting up their own label, Blank.Wav, the Faint return with Fasciinatiion, a set of songs that are as ambitious as they are sleek -- and tweaked: "I might distort myself a bit," Todd Fink sings on "Mirror Error," but that's an understatement. Virtually any sound that can be altered or augmented on the album has been, illustrating the blurring of man and machine that is one of Fasciinatiion's major themes. On "Forever Growing Centipedes," fuzzed-out beats and keyboards zap and twitch like they're attached to electrodes, while "The Geeks Were Right"'s chunky bassline gives the song's dystopian rock an electro-inspired backbone. While Wet from Birth's symphonic flourishes have been pruned, Fasciinatiion is just as ambitious as its predecessor, spinning cautionary tales about science, surveillance, and pop culture sleaze and setting them to kinetic, self-consciously synthetic backdrops. This love-hate relationship with technology is the cleverest thing about the album -- at least in theory. In practice, Fasciinatiion is almost as much of a mixed bag as Wet from Birth was; songs like "A Battle Hymn for Children" take the album's themes in overwrought directions. Other tracks have interesting concepts but don't do much musically, such as the tense childhood memories of "Fulcrum and Lever" and "I Treat You Wrong," which dissects a manipulative relationship with the clinical distance of an autopsy. On the other hand, "Fish in a Womb"'s squirm-inducing words ("That slice in my neck, it's oozing jelly clear as glass") detract from the song's subtly pretty melody and arrangement. The Faint's pop skills match their conceptual ambition more than a few times, however: "Machine in the Ghost" and "Mirror Error" are bouncy and spare, with skeletal rhythms just strong enough to support their surprisingly sweet melodies. "Psycho," the album's most overtly playful track, resembles a slowed-down Brainiac song with its squeaking synths and rubbery guitars, and "Get Seduced"'s pop culture tirade comes attached to some of the band's most nagging hooks. Fasciinatiion clicks enough of the time to make it a step forward from Wet from Birth, and despite its unevenness, at times it can be fasciinatiing. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide