Words with: The Faint

After one listen to Danse Macabre, you can't believe that the man behind the dense, dark and ever so slightly sinister lyrics of this death disco masterclass is such a shy and reserved interviewee. Perhaps through penning unambiguously entitled songs like 'Let the Poison Spill from Your Throat' and 'Ballad of a Paralysed Citizen' Todd Baechle is able to flirt with societies underbelly and cathartically purge himself of all those inner demons. Or maybe it is all just a playful and carefully choreographed charade like the French theatre movement that inspired the title of the new album.

Whatever you're spin on the mess of contradictions that is The Faint, witnessing their live melding of industrial strength synth hooks and 80's electro pop, you are forced to conclude with lead singer/keyboard Baechle that there is no-one quite like them at the moment. Looking like he's just clambered out of bed but all the cooler for it, over a stop/start interview Baechle sat down with Gigwise to chart their rise from lo-fi acoustic beginnings to imminent chart snogging status.

The band have changed a lot from a downbeat lo fi band to a more harder electronic act. Has this been a reaction against the musical norm, a desire to evolve as a band or both?

"I think it could be a reaction ... just to what's going on. To some degree it has to be a reaction because music is always going in some direction or doing something or there's a band that's really popular that all your friends like or you might also like. We just don't want to be that "same" type of thing. So in one way we're conscious of it, but I think that when we first started it was more like we're just trying to play music because we wanted to play music because we were excited about the Omaha music that we were hearing".

What characterised the Omaha scene that you came out of?

"There were just some bands that when I heard them, I couldn't believe that they were from Omaha. It just made us realise (hesitant pause) that we could do music y'know and it made us want to make music as well. I think at first we did the music that came the easiest to us, y'know. You've gotta work with what you have and what you can play and I think that's why our first sound was a folkey, lo-fi kinda coffee house racket. But it was song based and as we got a little more comfortable with playing, we were able to think what kinda music, what record do we want to hear right now. I wanna hear this kind of music so we'll make that song".

After that came the new wave themed Blank Wave Arcadia released in August 1999. You stated that when you toured that album that you wanted something more from the live experience. Was this in terms of a performance that the band would enjoy or did you want to try and interact more with the audience?

"We just wanted more from what we were doing. It just felt like it wasn't good enough anymore. We didn't want to be just another band. We'd go and see bands and even if we liked the bands you didn't get a lot of entertainment value. There's a stage ... music can be more involving. From our perspective we took a pretty radical direction at that time. It was not in fashion, there was no kind of movement, it was very uncool actually .... but we wanted to split the crowd into people who liked it and people who hated it. If you couldn't get anyone to hate you you weren't doing it good.

No Doubt are fans of the band and you recently toured the US with the ska-pop rockers. Did you find yourself winning their fans over at all?

"As much as we could have imagined. In an auditorium full of people who are - as far as I can tell - mostly exposed to just the radio. I think some people though wow, this is really different and then you talked to some people who were really inspired by us. It meant a lot to us to hear that coming from someone who wouldn't usually go to a concert".

Do you enjoy the challenge of converting doubters to The Faint cause?

"I think so ... y'know. We weren't really hoping to win them over as consumers that would buy our CD's or talk about us to their friends as the band they saw with No Doubt. This wasn't the goal at all. I think what we wanted to do was just become better at playing to people who didn't necessarily like our band".

Seemingly caught between the new wave of garage rock and Electroclash, do you see yourselves identifying more with New York band like Radio 4, The Rapture and The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs or Fischerspooner?

I think what you said first makes more sense to us. I dunno, maybe its just because we like those bands better. I like the idea of what I've heard Electroclash is supposed to be but I haven't seen the acts to back it up. Y'know, I'm all for it if it makes music more visually entertaining live. That's what we've always wanted to do and we've been trying to incorporate more and more of a visual show over the years but only now are we close to doing it"

With Dapose (formerly of death metal band LEAD) added on guitar, what sorts of sounds did you want to explore on Danse Macabre?

"He came in towards the end of making Danse Macabre and we just kinda finished the songs up with him, so there is guitar throughout that record. But, y'know, obviously there's a lot more keyboards. As for when we're making music, we want it to feel a little dangerous where it might scare people or some people might hate it. As long as we really like it, that's what we want out of it. Its even cooler if we think other people are gonna hate it. If we think they're just gonna be like, eh .... its not that good, we'd be disappointed. We don't want that indifference. We're learning from being in a band just like everyone else so you don't always get to right where you wanna be on every album. That's what keeps artists making records"

Danse Macabre's definitely go that dancefloor feel to it. Is that something that you want to maintain on future releases?

"It's so much fun to play to a room of people that are dancing and to be able to move around ourselves. I would guess that our next record will also be a dance orientated record, probably even more so dance. Y'know I've been hearing so much about the rock revival, but I think we're going in the wrong direction for that (laughs). Yeah, I'm thinking more of a dance group with a heavy metal guitarist".

Later that evening playing to a packed Manchester Roadhouse, probably much to Baechle's annoyance, everyone is united in ecstatic appreciation of The Faint. It seems as though these natives of Omaha are going to have to work much harder if they want people to "love" and "hate" in equal measures, because right now The Faint are pretty much unstoppable.

Photos by Andy Day