The Faint. Saturday, April 14, at Day on the Hill
Review by Crystal K. Wiebe
Day on the Hill, KU’s annual April rockfest on the Lied Center lawn, wasn’t really on a hill. Well, you got your tickets at the crest of a hill. And then you slid through mud to a valley below, where four bands played Saturday under a giant tent, in a giant pit of mud.
I missed openers the Roseline and Pomeroy, but the inevitable mud-dancing seemed somewhat appropriate to G Love & Special Sauce. Unfortunately, my tolerance for G Love’s style of noodling is low even on days when I’m not sinking ankle-deep in cold, gooey muck. So, after five minutes, I slogged back up the hill – G Love’s vocals somehow becoming clearer the farther I got from the tent – and headed to Massachusetts Street until the Faint was due on stage.
Let me go ahead and confess now to being a Faint superfan. Aside from a resurrected Elliott Smith’s , no other musical act could have enticed me back into that nasty mud pit on Saturday. And yet, deep within my devoted heart, I feared disappointment. In the middle of a soggy day, in a setting unconducive to its typical light effects and video aids, would the Faint be only faintly entertaining?
Happily, I can report that my fears were unfounded. The Faint played half an hour late but credibly, jamming for close to an hour through all its old synthy hits (“Glass Danse,” “Take Me to the Hospital,” “Worked Up So Sexual,” “Wet From Birth” and “I Disappear,” to name a few) and weaving in multiple new tracks, including a song about centipedes. Neither the mud nor the possibilty of making toe-to-toe contact with a centipede or its insect brethren could stop some people from taking off their shoes and dancing like it was 1985.
Usually, I, too, succumb to Faint-inspired full-body convulsions and end up pressed against the stage, covered in strangers' sweat. But I was unwilling to leave this show covered in mud. I left the crazy coeds to their danse macabre. From 20 feet or so back, I felt I could see the Faint more clearly than I ever had. Maybe that’s because the sun wasn't a strobe light and the band’s stage antics therefore seemed less dramatic and more playful. Observing the players was easier, too, undistracted by the creepy visualizations that accompany the Faint’s music at most live shows. (The videos were barely projected on the white wall of the tent.) A rather mangy-looking Todd Fink would wrap the mic cord around his face, stick the mic in his eye and mime his comrades’ parts. They often lost themselves in the music, too, bobbing their shaggy heads and swinging their hips.
The crowd was still only once – during the first song of the encore, a rare down-tempo piece with frontman Fink on keys. The unfortunate song seems doomed to be the “Erection” or “Ballad of a Paralyzed Citizen” of the band’s next album. Luckily, the Faint didn’t bother with either of those two songs and knew better than to end on a slow note. The band worked us up again (so sexual) with “Desperate Guys” and “Agenda Suicide” before leaving everyone with an open invitation to Omaha. I trudged back up the muddy hill, smiling this time, still confident in my agenda of spreading Faint love.
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i was there too and had a freaking great time. i was kinda mad that the roseline only got to play 3 songs because the faint were still soundchecking when they were supposed to be starting. my shoes weighed a ton by the time i tried to climb that hill tho.
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