Customer Reviews

Fasciinatiion

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've been a huge fan of the Faint since their 2001 break-out album "Dance Macabre" (can it really have been that long already?). After a remix album of that, the Omaha, NE band came back in 2004 with "Wet From Birth", which was good but not at the same level as "Dance Macabre" for me. Now, after a long break, finally comes the band's 5th studio album.

"Fasciinatiion" (10 tracks, 35 min.) starts off with a tentative "Get Seduced". The album really gets into high gear with "The Geeks Were Right", which surprisingly features electric guitars upfront in the mix, but a great song altogether. "Machine in the Ghost" is equally entrancing, even if it isn't very danceable. In fact, not a lot songs on here are danceable. There are a lot of mid-tempo electronic-needling tracks such as "Fulcrum and Lever" and "I Treat You Wrong". "Mirror Error" is my favorite track on here, an up-tempo track that bursts with energy.

But overall, this album is somewhat of a let-down. After a 4 year break from "Wet From Birth", the band still seems to wanna decide where it really wants to go. A lot of the songs feel tentative. This is not a bad listen (and at 35 min. it clips by in no time) but in comparison to the sublime "Dance Macabre", this album falters.

At first listen, I was not impressed with this album. It seemed to me like Todd Fink and crew "dumbed down" the album after their amazing Wet From Birth. But over the weeks I kept finding myself listening to Fasciinatiion. It finally occurred to me that the album isn't dumbed down at all, if anything its much more technical. Gone are the sweeping string sections from Wet From Birth and in are catchy bleeps blips and bloops to keep dragging you in for more. One thing that makes The Faint so great is that are able to do so much with their music, while retaining their signature sound. This is definitely a new direction for the band, and it should be, as they parted from Saddle Creek and their old studio to branch out on their own with blank.wav records and a brand new home to record.

I own the rest of The Faint's releases, and I don't think this quite stacks up. I agree with the reviewer who said that it is a letdown. It just doesn't have the same whateveritis that grabs you from their other releases. It's not a bad album by any means - still better than a lot of stuff out there - but it just doesn't live up to the expectations set by their previous work.

It's been a long, grueling 4 year wait for the follow up to Wet From Birth, and well I must admit this record was nowhere near worth it. All the energy The Faint had on previous releases is pretty much nonexistent here. The tracks on this record move slower and in the long run get boring. Some of the intro's to the song's show great potential like "Machine and the Ghost," which teases you with the same vibe that something off Danse Macabre would, but ultimately tanks the second the song kicks into full gear. "Mirror Error," is about the only song on this record that captures what the Faint are about, but even the worst song off Wet From Birth surpass that. Fans of The Faint I would recommend you pass. If your new to The Faint, I would start off with Blank Wave Arcade and Danse Macabre which are hands down, dance record masterpieces.

On their last album, 2004's Wet From Birth, The Faint wore their influences on their sleeve (which is not meant as a criticism of that excellent album). But if you've seen them live, you know they have a style of their own. On Fasciinatiion, they further define their musical style. But don't worry--everything here is just as danceable as anything they've ever done (with the exception of "Fulcrum and Lever," a poignant and poetic narrative about trying to learn to fly at the age of nine and ending up with a broken limb).

But Fasciinatiion is more than just a collection of catchy tunes. Half of the tracks explore the deepest ideas in philosophy and science. "Machine In The Ghost," for instance, is a sort of agnostic's anthem (and my personal favorite track), about the senselessness of arbitrary cosmological speculation, be it by theoretical astrophysicists or the pope. It begins: "There's no ghost in this machine, I make my own mistakes / We seem like skeletons with bonehead beliefs / History's been crucified, humans supernaturalized / We hope we're not alone." "The Geeks Were Right," the album's first single, is about a future in which biotechnology is used to modify human beings: "Egghead boys with thin white legs / have got modified features and software brains / but that's what the girls like... / The geeks were right." This theme is revisited on "Forever Growing Centipedes," a song that manages to sound both retro and futuristic at the same time with its 80s-era video games-inspired effects: "I could take up science and study cells of the body / Learn to postpone death under the microscope" ... "We could both grow up to be a hundred and fifty" ... "We'll see how long we can hide from death." But the song is primarily about (of all things) the many-possible-universes interpretation of quantum physics and human volition. "Mirror Error" is a refutation of the idea that consciousness creates reality by means of pointing out how many people are unhappy with the way they look. And "Fish In A Womb" is inspired, I take it, by evolutionary recapitulation--specifically, the fact that all vertebrates (including humans) have gill slits at some point during their embryonic development.

Not all of these issues are treated 100% correctly, such as their repitition in "Machine In The Ghost" of the conventional view that "cults arise from egos"--in actual fact, no one with a healthy ego would ever join a cult, or start one for that matter. (I imagine, on the other hand, that one would have to have a healthy ego to be in a successful band, though there are exceptions such as that sniveling neurotic Bono, who has a lot in common with the typical cult leader.) And in some cases The Faint seem to be saying that they don't know the answers, while in others they just use the issue as a jumping off point to go in fun and weird directions. But in any case, this is pretty heady material for a popular band to treat in their songs.

Of course, not all of the songs are so brainy. The rest deal with more conventional subjects, such as an examination of celebrity culture and the paparazzi on the hard-driving "Get Seduced," fighting with your lover and saying things you don't mean on the ridiculously catchy "Psycho" or the need to convince them that you're right and not being able to drop the subject on "I Treat You Wrong," to the pscyhological effects on its citizens of a culture that glorifies violence and jingoism on the politically-charged "A Battle Hymn For Children."

Most of The Faint's fans will enjoy Fasciinatiion primarily on the level of interesting, catchy, danceable songs, and there's nothing wrong with that as it certainly offers plenty of those. But for the thinking listener, it offers more. Whether you're a long-time fan or have never heard of The Faint before, you should definitely check out Fasciinatiion.

The Faint have released their first album in four years in true DIY fashion, recording, producing, and releasing it on their own label, blank.wav after leaving Saddle Creek. Fans will be happy to know that their sound hasn't changed all that much; there's still a heavy amount of vocoder, dark lyrics that fit the industrial moods and tones of their bleep-and-blip electronica, and more synths than you can shake a Depeche Mode record at.

Unlike their previous three albums, Fasciinatiion doesn't really have any overarching theme, instead jumping around from childhood injuries to the price of fame to the problems of mixing religion with war. The Faint have always been at their best when their lyrics coincide with their music, and when it comes to their shadowy, instinctive brand of electronica, those themes have normally been primal and violent (see "Erection" or "Drop Kick The Punks" from Wet From Birth or anything from Danse Macabre). Although variety is to be commended, it's always been more about the feeling with the Faint than with the message.

On some songs, however, the beats are sexy enough to keep the band afloat, as on opener "Get Seduced," which has some of the dirtiest synths of the year whirling around about the halfway mark, and the buzzing, throbbing guitar rhythms on the following "The Geeks Were Right." The best song of the bunch, however, is easily the unusually poppy "Psycho," a jumpy, surprisingly major-key apology with the catchiest chorus on the record.

Like Wet From Birth, the Faint's previous effort, however, Fasciinatiion is more than a little uneven. "Fulcrum and Lever," the aforementioned song about an accident in singer Fink's childhood, is a story in the mold of "Desperate Guys" from Wet From Birth, but unlike that song's ADHD-violin/drum machine beat, the song trudges along on a mess of gnarled synths and buries Fink's voice in layers of reverb to the point where there is little difference between verse and chorus.

On "Mirror Error," one of the record's more bouncier tracks, Fink sings, quite self-consciously, "I might distort myself a bit." Fink's voice is certainly more than a little distorted throughout the course of the record, and the worst songs are those that reduce his distinctive pipes to a robotic caricature like the above "Fulcrum and Lever" or the preachy, uninspired "A Battle Hymn for Children," which has one of the worst beats on the album.

However, the Faint are still pros at crafting innovative electronica-rock that is more dance-y than most contemporaries. While some tracks might drop into boredom ("I Treat You Wrong") and others build up without really going anywhere ("Fish in a Womb"), the syncopated keyboards and the shouted chorus of "Machine in the Ghost" and the guitar crunch and speeded-up feedback of "Forever Growing Centipedes" are proof that, if everything else fails, the Faint can make a tidy sum moonlighting at a rave.

I've been a fan of The Faint ever since the release of Media. I was rather disappointed with "Wet From Birth", but little did I know, that their next release would be pure garbage. I've boycotted this album amongst all of my friends, and giving it 1 star is giving it too much credit. THE FAINT ARE FINISHED.

Fasciinatiion (2008, Blank. Wave) The Faint's sixth studio album. **1/2

Glitch electronica is so often one of those rare and criminally underrated things; that is, of course, when it's done correctly. The Faint have opened up a barrage of problems on their latest LP, Fasciinatiion. One is that they don't really know what they want to do; all the songs are very glitch-heavy, with blips and bleeps like you wouldn't believe, but at the same time they introduce an electric guitar and hip-hop elements. Experimentation is great, but it doesn't go with anything they've put out here. Not only that, but the electronica beats they do have are far too harsh; the beeps are loud and obnoxious, trying to act as a facade of intricacy. It's too muddled and in the middle, for Fasciinatiion isn't soft like The Eraser or fluent like Sound of Silver, yet at the same time it holds itself back from being as violent as You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into. And at that point the album is drab, with Todd Fink's vocals being a poor version of Phil Collins. In fact, Fink is a major problem for the album, as his growling baritone and virtual nonexistant range make him boring to listen to. Had they a vocalist like Alexis Taylor, the album's strong points like "Get Seduced" and "Forever Growing Centipedes" would be a qualifying apology for the rest of it. But alas, even the better moments - "Forever Growing Centipedes especially, as grooves don't get much crunchier than that - are only slightly above mediocre. Not to mention that their lyrics are beyond ridiculous, and even though they develop an interesting dystopian theme, it's laughable when you listen closely to tracks like "A Battle Hymn For Children."

Once again another audio masterpiece for the faint. They maintain their unique style and sound as always. If you like music that is out of the normal predictable dull drum than the Faint is for you.

I am apparently one of the few people who doesn't think that DANSE MACABRE is the be-all and end-all of Faint albums. It was good. Hell, it was great, but WET FROM BIRTH outshined it. And FASCIINATIION raised the bar again. Now, maybe I just love the electronica pop more than others, but the Faint's music has gotten progressively specific and approachable as the years go by. I've always loved their lyrics, and this album passes with flying colors on that mark. Musically, things are less muddied than in previous albums, and are intricately well-layered. The only reason this doesn't get five stars is "I Treat You Wrong" and "Fulcrum and Lever" are, while great, skippable compared to the genius "Seduced," "Geeks," "Machine," Psycho" and "Centipedes."