Brighton's best...
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The Faint......
review Y’know, I’ve heard that this band have sold their guitars and bought synthesizers. They want to make a Gary Numan record. It’ll be two turntables and a microphone next. Actually, that’s a mite unfair on them. It’s not as if they’ve suddenly jumped aboard the eighties revival bandwagon; they’ve being doing their particular brand of shtick for a while now.The Faint started out as a weedy, indie-rock-lite outfit back in the mid nineties that barely anyone took any heed of. And, by their own admission, rightly so. They then performed an unexpected volte-face for 1999’s ‘Blank Wave Arcade’ and turned to some cheap old early-eighties analogues for inspiration in order to reinvent themselves as a synthed-up glamour puss of a band. Think Duran Duran without the huge white shirts. Indebted to such keyboard luminaries as Depeche Mode, Gary Numan and early Cure they are treading similar ground to fellow US acts The Killers, Radio 4 and The Rapture – taking elements of the past and fusing them with superior nineties production values to produce something quite interesting. Yes, these days it seems that there’s absolutely no escape from that indie-dance-fusion genre. Some day soon, it’ll not be unthinkable that all groups will be able to say with impunity that there has always been a dance element to their music. There’s a dark edge to their music: the eardrum-buzz of the electro-analogue synth noises and breakbeats that compete with the chunky guitar riffs manage to take them beyond mere Duran Duran copyism and elevate them towards a more industrial sound. Occasionally some of the imagery of their songs veers somewhat into the melodrama of Marilyn Manson territory (‘Let the Poison Spill from Your Throat’, ‘Posed to Death’), but these boys aren’t trying to shock. There’s no funny contact lenses or pretending to be Beelzebub’s handmaiden here. No, they’re great fun to watch. They’re almost like a cartoon band, larking around, throwing guitar shapes and displaying nifty footwork. I’m not even convinced that the keyboard player has a fully functional role in the band except to pose and wear incredibly tight trousers. Oh, and to twiddle a few knobs whenever he remembers. Which is as good a role in any band than anyone could wish for. Further influences are belied with a cracking version of Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’ that manages to get the Concorde 2 “Fa-Fa-Fa"ing along with the band. They showcase a fair few tracks from their forthcoming ‘Wet From Birth’ album, which means that there’s that odd feeling of unfamiliarity with a few of the tracks. But they at least they know when to pick up the pace with a well-timed ‘Worked Up So Sexual’ and finally passing out with an ‘Agenda Suicide’ that cranks the electro-clash backbeat and squally keyboard effects right up to blackout inducing levels.
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The Aquarium Theatre Bar
