Intro

By 2004, the new wave revival🔖✔ was in full swing, as bands like the Killers and Franz Ferdinand hit it big, and letting new wavers like Duran Duran reach out for the sunrise once again🔖✔. But while the guitar-driven revival grabbed the headlines, another movement had momentum. The Faint, Ladytron, and Freezepop were drawing from Depeche Mode, the Human League🔖✔, and other electronic pioneers, bringing a different side of new wave into the new millennium.

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The Faint

Omaha gave the US premier steak and financial guru Warren Buffet, but also synth revolutionaries the Faint. With their sophomore album right before the turn of the millennium they set Numan🔖✔/Depeche angst to a New Order dance tempo. And they hit popular new wave topics like technology🔖✔ and mass consumption.

Worked Up So Sexual

In a rock landscape full of 90’s ska revival and post-grunge, Worked Up So Sexual was a breath of fresh air. It was also a roll of the dice for the Faint, who were guitar-oriented. It delivers a New Order dance vibe, but with a healthy dollop of anger. That said, it’s also obvious the Faint are holding it back. The restrained tension echoes throughout - vocalist Todd Fink is worked up but doesn’t rage. And the abrasive synths are similar to those in industrial rock but with less catharsis. Lyrically, Fink explores the uncomfortable dynamics of strip clubs and sexual objectification. There's an irony in how danceable it all is: the song critiques the same pursuit of pleasure that its infectious groove seems to encourage. Pleased with the results, Fink later identified Worked Up So Sexual as a breakthrough in discovering the band’s sound.

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Agenda Suicide

The Faint parlayed the lessons from Worked Up So Sexual with their third album Danse Macabre (no, not Duran Duran’s Halloween🔖✔ album). They expanded their sound thanks to enlisting death metal guitarist Dapose, as well as synth experimentation. In Agenda Suicide, that’s made evident in the crunchy and aggressive guitar riffs. And there are high-pitched electronic-sounding synths serving as accents. Vocals round out the expansion with Fink rolling back the anger to expose something more vulnerable: angst. And Agenda puts to the fore that the Faint share industrial rock's abrasive synths and anxious vocals, but where industrial often unleashes its frustrations in cathartic explosions, the Faint keep theirs on a tight leash, locked into a dance groove. The lyrics are also angsty, taking aim at the conventional American Dream, where pursuing material comfort is a slow suicide. Fink is not only fighting against the factory-grade repetitive melody, but also the daily grind.

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Ladytron

Hailing from Liverpool (yes, that Liverpool🔖✔), Ladytron were the most popular of these revivalists. Taking their name from a Roxy Music🔖✔ song, they even got the Brian Eno stamp of approval (“the best of English pop music”). Sonically, the atmospheres Ladytron create recall Alphaville🔖✔ through a Kraftwerk lens. And Mira Aroyo uses lyrics in her native Bulgarian almost as an instrument (capitalizing on it sounding different than English).

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Playgirl

Playgirl wonderfully shows off the sustained synth notes that transport you to its world, accompanied by a slithering riff that recalls the Human League’s All I Ever Wanted (also 2001). Primary vocalist Helen Marnie is wistful on top of this, and hypnotizes with her repeated motifs, while Aroyo interjects in a deadpan manner (like Chris Lowe with the Pet Shop Boys🔖✔, but used more often). It’s great vocal countering, but also a conversation between feeling and detachment: Marnie sounds like she’s searching for something, while Aroyo seems unimpressed by the whole affair. And the looping arrangement reinforces the lyrics’ predicament. Like the protagonist, the music seems caught in a cycle, moving constantly but never quite escaping. The lyrics suggest a woman caught in an empty, hedonistic loop, but there's a yearning melancholy beneath the mechanical repetition.

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Seventeen

For their sophomore effort Light and Magic, Ladytron makes their melodies tighter, dialing back on the atmosphere. Seventeen is a great example: that slithering bassline is back, but sharper and more electric. The background synth is lowered in the mix and the notes are not sustained as long. Ladytron sharpens their dark persona in Light (haha) and Magic. You hear it in Seventeen: the melody is a bit more aggressive than Playgirl and Helen delivers a chilling mantra about the youth-obsessed modeling industry. The mechanical precision feels almost like an assembly line, with young models evaluated and discarded according to an industry's unforgiving standards. This turn to the dark side gave Ladytron a tone for their toolkit, employed to great effect on 2005’s Destroy Everything You Touch, and returns right up to this year’s A Death In London.

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Freezepop

Hailing from Boston (my good high school friend was acquainted with frontwoman Liz Enthusiasm while he was at MIT), Freezepop is 80’s-damaged in all the right ways. And with songs about Growing Pains star Tracey Gold and Commodore computers, that’s obvious. While the Faint and Ladytron opted for spiky and lush synths, Freezepop went lo-fi with riffs recalling 80’s video game music. And they are experts at flipping the script, which I’ll explain...

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Science Genius Girl

Their debut album Freezepop Forever set their template well, encapsulated in Science Genius Girl. Liz Enthusiasm’s clipped monotone with pauses is the female counterpoint to Phil Oakey, with an occasional vocoder thrown in for good measure. Its innocent and sugary synths are confirmation Freezepop picked the right name for themselves. And with 2000s synthesizers being able to provide lush backdrops, Freezepop purposely went to the Yamaha QY70, with its puny eight sounds and six patterns, for an endearing video game sound. Despite those limitations, the melody is irresistibly catchy, proving that musical charm doesn't require sonic sophistication. Lyrics-wise Science Genius Girl takes the technological hellscape of early synthpop (FFoxx🔖✔ and Numan anyone?) and completely flips it around. For example, Liz clones someone so well she asks her to join Freezepop. The listeners likewise aren’t worried by the whole thing.

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stakeout

Freezepop returned in 2004 with Fancy Ultra Fresh. Its synths are a bit more complex than their debut (using the same trusty QY70), but the dance ante is moreso increased - the melodies are faster but song lengths are longer. This is evident in stakeout - there are more changes in the synth riffs and timbres. For example, the dancy intro is answered with a 4-note riff right from their debut. With vocals, Liz still breaks out the robot but counters sometimes with a human touch. Lyrically, Freezepop continues its playful gender-role reversals, this time casting Liz as an obsessive romantic stalker. She claims she's patient, and other niceties. That occasional warmth is almost disarming, making her obsessive behavior sound like an innocent crush rather than the alarming surveillance described in the lyrics. At least the frenetic, New Order-esque melody is more transparent.

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Available in the Vault

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Outro

While the guitar-driven new wave revival grabbed the headlines, the electronic revival was already well underway. The Faint channeled industrial aggression into danceable tension, Ladytron brought icy atmospheres and dark sophistication, and Freezepop kept things delightfully quirky and lo-fi. Three very different approaches, but all drawing from the same late-’70’s and ‘80’s musical DNA. And with synthpop pioneers like the Human League finding renewed relevance, the revival wasn’t just about a new generation discovering the past: it was about the past finding its place in the present.

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