Through the instant access of internet and social media I see that long running electronic synth punk group The Faint is back on the road again. I was going to say in that sentence “from Omaha, Nebraska” — of which they all once were once from at some point — but members have now spread to other parts of the USA, including singer/instrumentalist Todd Fink who has been making a name for himself building out a dizzying range of high-quality bespoke headwear out in the Mojave Desert.
I’ll save the usual back story on this one as I only know a small fraction of their story, and that mainly being from the late 90s going into the 2000s and mostly my own fleeting personal experiences with the band. Back in the days when my old band Radio Berlin was starting up I had my feelers out for other bands working in a vaguely similar style, that being musicians from the 90s post-hardcore scene experimenting with synthesizers and taking on their own interpretation of music they had absorbed in the decade previous before synthesizers got banished out of pop, rock and indie music and relegated mostly to 90s dance and rave culture.
There used to be a well-known underground magazine during those times called Punk Planet out of Chicago, and in one issue from 1999 I believe there was a review of the debut album called Media by a band called The Faint that was rather scathing — if I remember correctly. However, a “bad” review can be a good review to some readers, and the somewhat uninformed review checked a number of points — including the bands use of new wave synthesizer sounds — that piqued my interest to where I thought this might be a band I should check out.
In hindsight after all of these years, the album Media is by far not the best place to start digging into this band — mainly as they were just starting out and figuring out what it is that they were trying to do — but rather the album that came after it that I managed to scoop from a Vancouver record store that had just been released. That album is 1999’s Blank-Wave Arcade.
Although there were a number of groups from similar backgrounds busting out the synths and pulling some influence from the decade previous at the time, this second album by The Faint became one of the standout releases from that aforementioned shift in sound, likely due to the catchy pop nature of their songs — perhaps like elements of Duran Duran mulched through noise and quirkiness associated with post-hardcore of the time. It didn’t go un-noticed as the band quickly started getting noticed which sort of exploded when the 2001 follow-up album came out, that being Danse Macabre (which was re-released as a deluxe edition in 2012).
With a sound that at times that brought to mind the MTV generation of the 80s, The Faint approached their music, touring and live performances from the DIY ethics they grew up in. I saw this first hand as Radio Berlin had played with them a few times in the USA while we were coincidentally on tour — playing recreation centres, legion halls and various all ages spaces — as well as opening up for them at least once when they rolled through Vancouver around this time. And during while Radio Berlin was on one extensive US tour, we were graciously put up in the house of singer Todd Fink in Omaha when we played there (in part organised by Fink himself if I remember), and were grateful for the friendliness and hospitality.
I had also seen them simply as a punter a couple of times, including a trip down to Seattle in 2001 with some friends at a show they did at a venue whose name has temporarily escaped me, playing with Pleasure Forever (recently signed to Sub Pop with a band comprising of ex-members of favourites The VSS) and the local post-hardcore group Kill Sadie.
When I moved to the UK in 2007 my life obviously moved off in different directions and The Faint sort of moved to the background, likely due to the fact from then on they seemed to never play the UK and I was mainly involved in a different sub-culture I suppose. And at this point I think it’s a good point to switch tracks and get on as to what this entry is actually about.
At numerous times I’ve touched on the concept of déja vu in music — whether with my own music or other people’s music — and for quite a long time I’ve noted this occurrence with two tracks off of Blank-Wave Arcade: “Call Call” and “In Concert”. It’s so obvious that one can only assume the band did it intentionally, as if to place a trademark motif in that album, or an embedded jingle that would worm its way into the heads of those listening to all the tracks on the record.
Basically, it’s a musical phrase that starts at the 58s mark of “Call Call” — the second track of the album (see clip heading this entry) — and then in the penultimate track “In Concert” at the 1m mark. While there’s a different energy to both tracks, with “Call Call” being more of a heavier dance dirge and “In Concert” being more spritely, light and airy, the fact that this motif occurs almost at the same minute/second mark is also a bit remarkable. I’m not sure how many listeners have caught onto this little “trick” but it’s one feature of that album that’s stuck with me all of these years.
Having said that, there’s probably countless examples of this in the decades that preceded the release of this album, and likely just as many in the years that followed. Traditionally it was somewhat common for albums, or even live performances before albums became a commodity in the 20th century, for there to be a refrain with certain compositions. I’m aware this this is sort of a practice even within classical music, or even more traditional varieties of folk music. There’s numerous examples in mid-20th century popular music that uses this practice of refrains, yet to see that in more modern, underground music usually associated with sub-cultures is a bit more rare.
This might be due to a mindset of “moving forward” and “doing something new” that’s prevalent in that musical world, yet it’s also common for bands to re-record older songs for newer releases or to provide an update as to how that song is performed as time progresses — as I’ve done — or even the prevailing trend of bands releasing remix albums in which other artists interpret a band’s original compositions, putting a new spin on favourites with the more common aim being that of making a track more “dance floor friendly”.
It might be that I’m a bit weird in that respect, but then again I’m always discovering interesting connections and practices within music in my mind, which is one of the reasons I started writing all of these entries in the first place!
Like many artists in recent years, The Faint have made all of their releases available through their own official BandCamp account, along with the usual outlets, and Blank-Wave Arcade can be found there. Coincidentally, that album has will be re-released next week (14 March 2025) as a deluxe edition of 2xLPs, containing additional remixes, live recordings and a track called “Brokers, Priests and Analysts” that until this time has been long out of print apparently.