The Faint - Fasciinatiion

The past three albums by Nebraskan uber-hipsters The Faint seemed to top each other successively by upping the ante of musical production whilst maintaining good storytelling sensibilities. Blank Wave Arcade introduced an agenda of lo-fi, sexed-up electro; Danse Macabre took a turn toward darker ideas with a fuller production; and Wet From Birth infused a punk energy into the formula. But while Fasciinatiion presses aural boundaries, it falls short lyrically. Sure, the electronics on tracks Mirror Error and Psycho show a keen ear for experimentation, but the lyrics present a drawback that's shown throughout the LP. Psycho offers a passable narrative of an argument, but tracks like the musically brilliant Machine In The Ghost tackle cliched subjects done to death (religion, celebrity culture, violence) in less-than-fresh ways. Strange redeemers in this right include Fulcrum And Lever, which pairs a hip-hop beat with an almost-rapped narrative of frontman Todd Fink breaking his leg as a child, and jilted slow jam Fish In A Womb, about pre-birth anxieties. So while Fasciinatiion shows The Faint can still lay down a beat, from a band who usually match music with some crafty wordsmithery, there's plenty of room for improvement. [Jason Morton]