Search - Faunts :: High Expectations/Low Results

Imagine a late night slowcore band viewed through fogged up

Aquarius Records | San Francisco | 03/19/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There's just something about music that is slow and mysterious, foggy and indistinct, fuzzy and dreamlike that just gets me everytime. Any sort of music sounds better to me, once it's buried in record crackle, or wrapped in thick swirls of fuzzy distortion, or smeared with a gauzy ambient haze. But the music of Faunts is so perfectly suited to being goergeously obfuscated that it's hard to imagine this music any other way.



High Expectations doesn't sound like some crystal clear recording that was later treated with all sort of foggy filters, no this record sounds like it was created like this, birthed from some mysterious ether, a ghostlike sonic wraith, dreamy droney slow motion rock drifting skyward like some disembodied slowcore spectre. Blissy and incandescent, with a candelit churchlike warmth, a glow suffusing the air all around. Like a druggier more fuzzy Low. Each track a lugubrious creep, romantic and melancholy, hushed vocals, brushed drums and swoonsome lapsteel. Occasionally the songs build to a ferocious climax, the sound like a wall of blown out shoegaze guitars, with big distorted drums, beneath squiggly white hot traces of incendiary psychedelic skree, before drifting back to earth, a slow simmer, fuzzy melodies drifitng over and around ethereal vocals and muted mood rock minimalism.



Imagine a late night slowcore band, viewed through fogged up glass, thick with running rainwater, everything wavery and blisssfully unfocused, every once in a while the headlights of a passing car flare brilliantly, spinning wild prisms of color and white hot sparkles before fading back to a muted dusky drift.

High Expectations has lots of varied elements, even if they only surface briefly here and there, some jazzy shuffle, some jangly indie rock, some Flaming Lips-ish big beat drug pop, some epic Godspeed-ish, even a bit of near-new wave, but those disparate elements all manage to get woven deftly and beautifully into Faunts' delicate and drowsy sonic world."

Another Amazing Band from Canada

ModSquad | Canada | 10/31/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Faunts blew me away the first time I saw them live in Edmonton opening for Broken Social Scene in a tiny sold out university pub. In fact they stole the show, and completely shocked the hell out of everybody, Broken Social Scene included. High Expectations/Low Results is just as memorable as that first show.



What you'll get is incredibly lush, textured, shoegaze-inspired, yet completely Canadian sound, which brings to mind bands such as BSS, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, or Mogwai, but does not copy them and definetly holds its own, seamlessly mixing guitars and electronics.



High Expectations/Low Results is a soundtrack to the melancholy days, a symphony best played on cold dark winter evenings, when you just feel like turning off the lights, lighting a candle, putting on the headphones, and taking off on a sonic journey. This record has not left my playlist since I first picked up a band-released early copy in 2004. Now that Friendly Fire has given us the official release, everyone else can get in on the secret. Cheers."

I heart the faunts

rubysoha | san francisco, ca | 12/29/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"a beautiful introspective album that winds perfectly through a rainy sunday or a mellow night. the songs are long and develop slowly but are not hesitant. it is in constant rotation at my place. check it out if you like sigur ros, etc."