Faust cleans up act with 'Something Dirty'

Faust’s longevity is something to be admired. Forty years after the release of the band’s debut album, Faust is still capable of making an engaging album that flirts with both chaos and consonance.

“Something Dirty” follows a somewhat normal path for Faust of combining more conventionally beautiful songs with dark experimental pieces. Tracks like “Herbststimmung” and “La Sole Dorée” create a soothing, enveloping mist.

Yet the band is quick to shatter the mood with songs like “Dampfauslass 1,” a bit of industrial music hidden on the album.

Sometimes Faust’s sense of variety works against the band. At only one or two minutes, multiple songs beg for a little more development. A few seconds of demented folk music on the album’s penultimate track make sense neither as a transition nor as a discrete track.

Faust is responsible for legitimizing the term krautrock on their seminal album, “Faust IV.” Now, decades later, that term means very little, but Faust is just as concerned with navigating the possibilities of experimental music.