dot_fennel | [music] THE FAINT - Wet From Birth (Saddle Creek) [5 listens]

After three quiet years basking in the success of Danse Macabre, The Faint should not have needed to make a transitional album, but they did, so here we are.

The band clearly still like beats, and synthesized noises, and the odd mix of feelings that danceclubs instill in their patrons. But at every turn they seem uncomfortable making "dance music", which they only ever barely did, and most of all they want to come out into the light. The album art is garish the way everything is if you've just woken up, and the video for "I Disappear" (included on the CD) would put Dr. Seuss in the hospital.

This would nevertheless be unmistakably The Faint if the high points came closer together. The first track, "Desperate Guys", recaps Danse Macabre but with more vocal roboticisms (yay!) and a string section (huh?). The strings nicely accentuate the everything-all-at-once feel on "Guys", except then for the rest of the record everything they touch kind of sucks because of it. A similar string section afflicted bassist Joel Petersen's solo album earlier this year, so maybe it's his fault. I don't know.

I am attached to the "they can't be serious" seriousness of "Erection", and "Paranoiattack" proves that it well deserved to be a highlight of the band's great show in Boston two years ago. But this record is a distant third on the list of Faint albums worth hearing.