I crossed my fingers, but I didn’t beg

Indie kids are like other kids in that they enjoy having sex and attending parties. They are different however, in the sense that sex is only interesting if performed say, in a cold room, on an unadorned floor, and possibly with someone they just met. If performed correctly, they may awake the next day and partake in the contrived pleasure of a fashionably low-tar cigarette as their skin crawls with the memory of the night before in a satisfactorily dramatic manner.

Of course, this means that Top 40 jams absolutely won’t do when it comes to mood- and post-mood music. Enter Nebraskan synth-punks The Faint. Melding together the quiet menace of Suicide’s electronic pulses, the lyrical sleaze and rapid-fire synths of Soft Cell and occasionally, the songwriting of Depeche Mode, one would be hard pressed to not call them derivative. And they are, I’ll happily admit; it’s just that they do what they do remarkably well, a couple of caveats notwithstanding.

‘Desperate Guys’ starts us off with the lust of the self-deprecating among us:

That first inconceivable touch
That I was planning
I mean wishing of
How embarrassed I'd have been
If you knew what I was thinking of

A brief violin introduction gives way to Clark Baechle’s drums and Joel Peterson’s buzzing bass. Todd Fink’s vocodered vocals, a mainstay throughout the record, recount a familiar tale of playing hard-to-get with females he doesn’t have a chance with in the first place. Fast-paced staccato loops and slight bits of electronic dissonance are used to maximum effect to finish off a strong opener.

‘I Disappear’ begins with a burst of distorted bass, in the vein of Girls Against Boys but punchier. Fink’s keyboard loops are all over the place, stretched one second and shortened while a catchy Cramps-eque surf guitar lick keeps the whole thing from falling apart. It’s another good track. ‘Southern Belles in London Sing’, a reference to Fink’s wife Orenda of the dream-pop group Azure Ray, showcases a surprisingly warm sound, incorporating strings and some rather charming violin bits, but maintaining the upbeat electro-bounce characteristics of their regular material. While it’s immediately accessible and deserving of single status (though rather unrepresentative of the group’s sound), it’s equally one of the best tracks on the record.

Things don’t go as well on ‘Paranoiattack’, the obligatory ‘political’ track, though. Admittedly, this was 2004 and it would probably have been sacrilege for indie bands to not have gotten in some shots at the establishment, but this simplistic take on post-9/11 America doesn’t do much justice to an otherwise notable idea. Plus, it sounds like a bad Fischerspooner take too, and can safely be ignored in its entirety. ‘Drop kick the Punks’ is problematic as well; Fink’s songwriting, generally balanced between humorous witticisms and stalker-esque musings, is clearly on auto-pilot here. A brisk dance number, albeit stylistically similar to ‘I Disappear’, is spoiled by the self-indulgent digs at mainstream culture:

Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht
Visciouscounterpoperosionrevolution101 !

Two standout tracks however place this firmly back in the ‘buy’ camp. ‘Phone Call’ features the cold ambience of Black Celebration-era Depeche Mode, with the addition of bedsitter self-doubt and a wholly appropriate twangy just-short-of-camp guitar solo. ‘Erection’ is the second, and something of an album centerpiece. Starting off with a perfectly sleazy three-chord guitar loop and handclaps, the song is a fitting update of Blank Wave Arcade’s sleeper hit, ‘Worked up So Sexual’, mixing its danceability with the gothic flourishes of 2001’s Danse Macabre.

That Wet From Birth is a quick listen will become apparent from two things. The actual brevity of the album is one; the album is all of 34 minutes long. The other hint is the range of similarities between different songs. The beat during the chorus in ‘How could I Forget’ is repeated on the very next track ‘I Disappear’, albeit to much better effect. ‘Symptom Finger’ is recognizable only because it sounds far too much like a rehash of ‘Cars Pass in Cold Blood’ off 1999’s Blank-Wave Arcade, and is pretty unmemorable on a record that otherwise takes some interesting new directions on their sound. While it’s a good record, its inconsistencies are too apparent on a record of this length, which ultimately keeps me from recommending it unequivocally.