© jesua kansur/heThe Maria was sold out again when I showed up to see the Faint a few weeks ago. Doesn’t Berlin have a good sounding slightly bigger venue to house shows that sell out like that? I missed Shellac because of that over capacity bullshit. Anyway, they were turning people away at the door as usual, there was complication about the guestlist, but we caught the error (too many pseudonyms meself) and I thankfully slipped inside.
the faint© jesua kansur/HE
The show started almost immediately, and I used my camera to push my way to the front left side of the stage. There was a bit of technical fallout, which left the band standing in the dark in silence waiting until some girl yelled “WE WANNA DANCE!” Hey Berlin, do you fucking ever want to do anything else? But the comment worked brilliantly as the singer repeated “You wanna dance?…(7 seconds of paused silence)…which was followed by: "PERMISSION GRANTED!”
The technical problem was fixed, and BAM there was a silkworm bass army swarm of sawtooth, cathedral Devo church-organ low end, and I was swallowed up into the Faint’s dark and weird flailing science party. The band headbanged harder than most metal bands I’ve seen and danced (with pretty good moves) non-stop. My attention was seized with the remarkable visual accompaniment timed with the brilliant volume and sound. (Hats off to the Maria for that one). It was done so well that even though the crowd were mostly annoying dopes, I didn’t notice a single one of them or what they were doing once the band started to play. Imagine being taken on a trip by a live band?! Holy shit! I thought those days were dead like a maggot eaten raccoon belly.
the faint©jesua kansur/HE
The Faint played some new material that sounded good, hooky on first listen as I went without sampling the new record, but they also played previous stuff, mostly from Dance Macabre. I could have heard more Blank Wave Arcade, but I was still thoroughly impressed at how unpretentious they seemed. Taking them out of the hip spotlight made them seem more comfortable, more real, and for pop music so dark and evil sounding, they looked like they were really having a great time, getting their kicks fully. Highlights were the crispy mean vocoder sound on “Your Retro Career Melted” and the bludgeoning bass guitar tone. The bass guitarist’s hair also made me jealous. --- Jesua Kansur
