FAUST IV

Maybe I don't "get" this album as so many others do, but "Faust IV" left me a little cold. The opening song, "Krautrock," is the best song on the album. It's dense, noisy and the repetition actually works quite well for a 12-minute song. It's pretty sweet, but the major bummer is that the rest of the album really doesn't follow in it's footsteps. "The Sad Skinhead" is a straightforward reggae tune that's kind of pointless. "Jennifer" is a good song, kind of a dreamy pysch-pop song that has a pretty trippy breakdown at the end. "Just A Second" is the closest thing to the first track but it is soon drowned out by weird electronic sounds that really don't do anything. "Picnic On A Frozen River" could have been a good song and bounces along quite nicely along and features a nice sax solo. What kills it though is the last half which endlessly repeats a rather irritating melody line. "Giggy Smile" slows things down a bit and shows some folk influence. It's a good song. The last two songs, "Lauft" and "It's A Bit Of A Pain" are real letdowns. "Lauft" is an instrumental atmospheric piece with electronic keyboard sounds with no rhythm or song structure. "It's A Bit Of A Pain" is kind of like "Giggy Smile," but completely ruined with more unnecessary noise.

This album is very weird, but really ruins a lot of good ideas by all the noise and electronic distortion garbage that just pops up out of nowhere and clutters the music space. It gets the the point where it's not very enjoyable anymore. I think it would have been better if they tried to incorporate the sounds into the song, or just get rid of a lot of it all together. In any case, it's still a pretty adventurous album, but a lot of things just really didn't work well.

Standout songs: "Krautrock"