The Faint @ 9:30 Club

MP3: The Faint - Conductor (Thin White Duke Remix)

All photos: Faith Desired

The Faint are always a good prospect for a fun night and great show.

Unfortunately, the past two times I saw the Faint, their opening spots weren’t filled with the creme de la creme, and the trend continued here.

Jaguar Love, on paper, should be a fairly interesting project. Comprised of remnants of Pretty Girls Make Graves and Blood Brothers, the result is less than spectacular. In fact, it turned downright painful. I won’t say much else since I’ve already had my share of negativity earlier this week. In short, the performance was a muddied mess fronted with vocals from a guy who sounds like he has a bit too much love for Angus of AC/DC or hair metal in general.

The Faint’s set was career-comprehensive and, essentially, one high-octane adrenaline-and-endorphin rush. An absolute, glorious assault on the senses and sensibilities. The visual aspects of the show consisted of some spectacularly directed lighting that was perfectly matched to sound, running the gamut from subtle mood-setting to blinding brilliance without becoming distasteful/excessively busy. Interestingly, the projections for this show seemed to have a less prominent role than the last performance. Filled mostly with transparent loops of pre-recorded shadow-figures of the Faint performing, as opposed to actual film clips and propaganda-like art from previous shows.

Front-man Todd Fink was dressed for the occasion, in a lab-coat and vintage goggles, ready to play the role of ringleader/demented aural alchemist. Fink’s stage presence was fantastic, rarely if ever letting the energy and momentum built during each song diffuse. Looking at the stage was almost overwhelming, verging on the edge of chaos with FInk’s dancing and showboating as orchestrator along with the remaining 4 band members each going wild.

Expectedly, the songs that really exploded were tracks off the Faint’s canonical dance-punk album Danse Macabre. The tension-and-release of “Agenda Suicide” and the insistent, driving beats of “Glass danse” and “Posed to death” are guaranteed floor-shakers and body-movers, pushing the crowd into a frenzy. Wet from Birth also got some loving treatment, particularly energetic renditions of “Paranoiattack,” “I Disappear” and a surprisingly engaging performance of “Birth.”

Tracks off their relatively mediocre latest effort, Fasciinatiion, really pop live. The glorious and deep electro crunch of “Get seduced” turns absolutely bone-rattling, and along with the infectious and shout-ready lyrics about celebrity culture, the song is a new crowd favorite. Lead single “The geeks were right” holds up as well, with the entire audience already knowing the lyrics and the downbeats for their dance moves by heart. The pitter-patter beat-feet of “Forever growing centipedes,” punctuated by that ever-delicious guitar riff turns out to be a deadly and motivating combination. Another new album highlight was “Mirror error,” locking into a spectacular groove and the audience singing the “oh-oh” chorus in unison, good feelings abounded.

While many of the performances were far from perfect, with some tempo issues and certain people not quite keeping things together with the rest, this was more than compensated for by sheer entertainment value and quality showmanship. This show is one of an increasingly more frequent breed in DC where instead of stodgy stoics, everyone loses themselves to enjoyment, tosses their cares aside and just busts a move. Clearly in the end, that’s the only metric that matters to the Faint. And this only does good things for the music scene.