Product Description

The Faint are set to release their first album in four years ''Fasciinatiion'' through their own, newly-formed label, blank.wav. ''Fasciinatiion'', The Faint's fifth album, is the first in the band's ten-year history to be written, recorded, produced, art directed and released entirely on their own. ''Fasciinatiion'' is an album that draws on many defining facets of The Faint's sound, while remaining completely different from anything else they've put out. A record whose themes include predictions and the future, tabloid culture, the allure of what may never be, childhood lost and more, ''Fasciinatiion'' sounds as if it's been beamed in from a satellite whose sole purpose is observing, and making sense of, the details of every day existence. In certain ways, the album is the most mechanical and precise of the band's work: The vocals sounds less human than ever before; the bass lines are more mangled, keyboards spiral and squeal out of control; electronic pings and stabs invade the melodies; the lyrical anxiety and disdain of previous albums pervades almost every song on ''Fasciinatiion''. Opener ''Get Seduced'' is The Faint at their best, the song's critique of celebrity culture matched with one of the finest choruses they've ever written. First single, ''The Geeks Were Right'', draws on the tenets of futurist literature and sliding, siren-call guitars. ''Fulcrum and Lever'' marries ambient noise with space references, alienation and a stuttering, flexing beat, while ''Mirror Error'' explores identity and consciousness within its perfect, propulsive electro-pop. Closer ''A Battle Hymn for Children'' flinches with nervous rhythms against resentment of the future to be inherited and keyboards that sound like flailing voices (or is it flailing voices that sound like keyboards? On ''Fasciinatiion'', one can never tell).

Track Listing

1. Get Seduced
2. The Geeks Were Right
3. Machine in the Ghost
4. Fulcrum and Lever
5. Psycho
6. Mirror Error
7. I Treat You Wrong
8. Forever Growing Centipedes
9. Fish in a Womb
10. A Battle Hymn for Children

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78758 in Music
• Released on: 2008-08-05
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

3.5 Stars... Where is the fascination?
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.

Like taking a walk through a harmonized malfunctioning computer
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.

Doesn't disappoint--catchy and intelligent
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.