Faint - The Flight of the Macabre Dancers

The Faint's musical arc started out as a perfectly ordinary indie-rock act before landing on the synth-pop made great by bands like Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Ultravox. A new wave for the third millennium.

The band was formed in Omaha, Nebraska, by the Baechle brothers, singer Todd and drummer Clark. They were joined by bassist Joel Petersen and none other than Conor Oberst, who was destined for a glorious career in a completely different field. The four initially named themselves Norman Bailer, later changing it to Faint.

Indie-rock dominated the mid-west music scene in the second half of the '90s, and big musical ideas were needed to stand out. These were entirely lacking on Media, the debut album released in 1998 right after Oberst's departure, as he went on to launch his own successful Bright Eyes project.

The only interesting moments come from the brief "Lullaby For The...", a sincere folk-rock number in the best tradition of the genre. Otherwise, the album offers nothing but dutiful exercises in deadly dull indie, drawing on reference points like Dinosaur Jr., Eggs and Pavement. Todd Baechle does everything he can to imitate Robert Smith's mournful vocals, succeeding, however, only partially (just listen to "Some Incriminating Photographs" to hear what we mean).

The turning point in the Faint's career came the following year, with the addition of keyboardist Jacob Thiele and the release of Blank-Wave Arcade. The indie-rock that had characterized their previous work was abandoned for good, deemed by the four members too overused, limited, and ultimately boring. The way out came precisely through a heavy use of keyboards, synthesizers and electronic effects "offering unlimited possibilities": the inevitable reference point could only be the new wave of the previous decade.

While "Sex Is Personal" and "In Concert" point all too obviously to the post-punk of Cure and Television, most of Blank-Wave Arcade is a tribute to synth-pop: listening to songs like "Worked Up So Sexual" (the band's first radio hit) and "Cars Pass In Cold Blood", it's impossible not to think of Ultravox's Midge Ure or OMD, a band the Faint would pay further tribute to years later with a cover of "Enola Gay".

The (few) moments where the four show some real personality are concentrated towards the end of the album ("Sealed Human", "The Passives"), where the '80s revival merges with vibrant, modern electronics, shaking off that sense of "already heard" that otherwise marks the record.

Having fully absorbed the sounds of Blank-Wave Arcade, and achieved total command of the '80s revival, the Faint moved on from imitation to creation. In 2000, the group also brought in Michael "Dapose" Dappen, a death-metal guitarist formerly of LEAD. The following year saw the release of Danse Macabre, the Omaha band's masterpiece, driven by the single "Agenda Suicide", a hard, fast rock track not far removed from the industrial scene, seasoned with pop synths and a chorus that lifts its riff straight from Genesis's "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight".

This time it's an album built to last: paradoxically, the songs are ever more studied and complex, yet at the same time more engaging and compelling, more danceable. More pop. "Glass Danse" and "Your Retro Career Melted" feel less and less like the new wave era and more and more like contemporary club music; while here and there traces of New Order and Depeche Mode still surface ("Posed To Death"), the synths they're channeling now belong to Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers. Once again, it's the back half of the album that proves the most adventurous. "Violent" pushes beyond synth-pop into house-music territory, while "The Conductor" rides a hypnotic, nervy bassline topped with menacing gothic keyboards.

It's also impossible not to notice the remarkable evolution of singer Todd Baechle (who had by then renamed himself Todd Fink), who finally stops imitating Robert Smith and arrives at a vocal style roughed up by electronic effects: the lyrics, too, while retaining their characteristic ironic streak, have matured, moving away from the obsessive sexuality that permeated the songs on Blank-Wave Arcade.

In 2003, Astrawerks released a thoroughly forgettable LP containing remixes of the album, made by emerging electronic artists (among others, Medicine and Paul Oakenfold). Meanwhile, Joel Petersen also launched a controversial solo career under the name Broken Spindles, releasing three electronic albums between 2001 and 2005. In 2004 he then collaborated with indie band Beep Beep on the album "Business Casual".

Wet From Birth, the fourth studio effort from the Omaha band, came out in 2004 and represents a quest for confirmation. The band needed to prove it could match the heights of Danse Macabre without falling back on genre clichés, but that goal was only partly achieved. There's no shortage of new elements, such as the use of violin and cello, or the hefty doses of guitar, an instrument that finds noticeably more room than on the two previous records ("Birth" is a desolate, distortion-laced dark ballad, while "Dropkick The Punks" brings to mind Nine Inch Nails). The electronic melodies, the Faint's trademark, are instead the album's weak point: at times banal, they can trigger a sense of déjà vu ("Erection" is a deliberate homage to Depeche Mode, while the riff of "Symptom Finger" sounds too close to Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me 'Round").

That said, it must be acknowledged that Wet From Birth is a well-crafted album, carefully thought out in its details - further proof of the band's newfound maturity.

After a four-year wait, during which the band severed ties with Saddle Creek, Fasciinatiion came out on Blank.wav, a label owned by the Faint themselves. As on Wet From Birth, there are driving basslines and slashing guitars; as on Danse Macabre, you can hear melodies with a dark aftertaste; as on Blank-Wave Arcade, synthesizers harking back to 80s new wave dominate. In short, every element of Fasciinatiion simply retreads already well-worn paths. "Psycho", "Mirror Error" and "Forever Growing Centipedes" are the most interesting moments on an otherwise largely predictable record.

As has happened to some more celebrated peers (the first to come to mind are Rem), the Omaha quintet seems to have long since found the recipe for writing and playing the music it wants: now, however, it does little more than apply that formula mechanically. The quality of their output remains more than respectable, but the creative drive appears to have been lost along the way.

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