"I should have noticed the beauty, and not how it hurt"

I'm seeing this band live in a few days; this will be my second time doing so. I suppose I should be ashamed to admit that, but I can't bring myself to dislike the Faint, despite their legions of obnoxious scene-kid fans, despite the breathtaking pretension and condescension of some of their lyrics, despite the mediocrity of certain of their songs. Because they've got presence - they know how to deliver a great song and make you dance. They're not great art, and they may not be remembered in ten years - and honestly, this album seems like the first nail in their coffin, putting a few of their worst traits on obvious display. Fans will love it, critics will look it at further proof of the band's worthlessness. Even so, it wins overall.

The album's sound varies from a dense, outstanding wash of sound to undistinguished synthpop, maddeningly inconsistent. Still it's an intriguing change, and a logical step forward from the indie-electro of their previous "Danse Macabre".

The opener "Desperate Guys" is one of the album's worst moments - the song pulses lifelessly along in its minimalistic way, tricked out with pointless baroque violin sounds. The lyric is one of the band's most obnoxious, speaking to their scene-kid tendencies. But with track two, "How Could I Forget?", the album takes off. Over a throbbing, hypnotic bass-driven melody, what's-his-face sings a lyric mocking an anonymous girl:

"I might be an introvert to you, a shallow fashionista
Deep as any paper plate, dressed just like the girl beside you
How could I forget a waste of cloth? Of course, I do remember
On the back deck, drunk and awkward, I think we accidentally met"

It's self-important and unlikeable, sure, but somehow they pull it off - the haunting chorus stays in my head for hours. The single "I Disappear" follows, full of guitar bombast and shouted lyrics. And from there, the album becomes a bizarre grab-bag. The strings work beautifully on the urgent "Southern Belles In London Sing", an oddball tribute to the singers of Azure Ray, who are apparently dating a couple members of the Faint. A jangling guitar accompanies the keyboard sounds and disaffected vocals of the verses, and then the lilting voices of Azure Ray themselves come in for the choruses.

"Erection", "Paranoiattack", "Drop-Kick the Punks" and "Phone Call" alternately enthrall or aggravate me, depending on my mood. When I'm feeling good, the aggressive guitar sequence of "Erection" and its primitive beat hit me like nothing else - but other times, its lyric annoys the hell out of me - are they trying to be ironic or funny, or are they - God forbid - trying to pull off some sort of poetic achievement by veiling the organ of the title in a series of inappropriate metaphors?

The lyric of "Paranoiattack" wears out its welcome quickly - it's as if the band went to see "Bowling for Columbine", then rushed home and wrote a song. But the stop-start musical sequence that kicks in between verses is one of the best musical moments of the album, and the singer's rote delivery has a certain charm to it. This, coupled with Fischerspooner's recent "We Need a War", conclusively demonstrates that electro bands just shouldn't come anywhere near poltical material.

"Drop-Kick the Punks" is a bit puzzling - straightforward punk rawk which works much better live than on the album. And "Phone Call", continuing the album's world tour of various genres, tries vaguely for a reggae sound, but only succeeds in boring me.

The album's closing songs are two of its most winning: "Symptom Finger" is one of the band's most memorable songs, a dramatic and completely successful dance song with processed vocals and beautiful string accompaniment. And "Birth" - where do I begin? I begin by ignoring the fact that it has lyrics (it begins with the lines "In the beginning there was semen / In a deep mound of flesh" and gets worse from there), and I concentrate on the melody, a poignant guitar sequence with an increasingly bombastic beat, replete with staccato strings, leading up to an intense, apocalyptic climax comparable to that of the band's latter-day signature song "Agenda Suicide".

I don't really know that there's any point to listening to the Faint with a pair of critical ears. Instead of trying to do away with their most embarrassing tendencies, they usually just glory in them - and they're the only band whose excess can really succeed in this way. What other band could pull off a song like "Worked Up So Sexual"? When the band's intensity recedes, "Wet From Birth" begins to seem a little stale and overdone - the Faint is best off eschewing subtlety and keeping things overheated. Any listener who can find it in themselves to get caught up in the moment and forget everything they know about musical standards will love this album.