Archives by Topic: Nine Inch Nails
NIN Oeuvre Blog: Last
Editor’s Note: This entry originally appeared on the blog Ten Thousand Lies on June 1, 2007.
“Last,” the third song on the Broken EP, was my first “favorite” NIN song. I can’t remember what order I bought the albums in, but I want to say that I had a copy of TDS first, and then PHM, and then, finally, Broken. Whatever the case, it wasn’t until I got heavily into Broken that one song emerged from the fray as a “favorite”. Before then, every song was on equal footing with me. But “Last” changed all that.
Maybe it’s the lyrics that did it for me. To this day, the images that Trent paints in “Last” are some of the ones that stick out most strongly in my mind. “Fresh blood through tired skin,” conjures an image of sickly, paper-thin flesh in my mind, and of the strange and somewhat grotesque sight of a vein pumping beneath it. “My lips may promise, but my heart is a whore.” Well, that line comes up in my brain so often that I long ago decided, if ever I was to do a follow-up to what was arguably my most successful song under the moniker of Pop Bubblegum Trash, a ditty entitled “Little Fascist Panties” (after a Tori Amos lyric, yes), then it would be called “My Lips May Promise,” or else, “My Heart Is A Whore.”
And, of course, the name of this site comes from “Last,” too. “Look through these tired eyes. You’ll see ten thousand lies.”
I was listening to a Pandora Podcast on song lyrics just last night, on the way home from work, and they got into a discussion about the power of repetition in popular music. They made the point that, while repetition doesn’t really work in poetry, it can do wonders for a song. I believe the song they used to illustrate the point was something by the Kinks, but I think there are quite a few NIN songs that could be given as examples, too. And “Last” is certainly one of them.
Consider the power of the word “come” in this song, the repeated invitation it offers. The music of Nine Inch Nails is nothing if not participatory. Trent invites the audience to “step right up,” in “March of the Pigs,” and here, in “Last,” he pleads with us to “come, come, come on.” And if we are at all hesitant, the driving guitar line is right there to give us a firm nudge.
Every song on Broken is amazing in my mind, from the opening crunches of “Pinion” to the hidden gems “Suck” and “Physical”. But the anger that’s oozing out of every corner of this EP is most palpable on “Last”. The Woodstock ‘94 version of “Happiness in Slavery” won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 1996 but, in my opinion, “Last” is the most metal song Trent Reznor’s ever written.
NIN Oeuvre Blog: Just Like You Imagined
Editor’s Note: This entry originally appeared on the blog Ten Thousand Lies on June 1, 2007, long before GHOSTS brought back the instrumentals in the big way that I’d been hoping for.
Having read about Trent Reznor’s background quite a bit over the years, I’ve always imagined that he was the kind of guy I would’ve wanted to hang out with in high school, but would’ve been too intimidated by to approach. He seems to have been, at least partially, the quintessential band geek. A piano player from an early age, and a member of the marching band in high school, he was the kind of talented kid I always dreamed of being, or of being around (figuring I could absorb some talent by osmosis to keep for myself). But it was that level of talent in someone that scared me away most of the time. “Why would he want to hang out with me?” I would think. “What do I have to offer?”
Anyway, all of this is my way of beginning to say that, if I had known Trent in high school, Nine Inch Nails is exactly what I would have expected him to do with his life. Maybe not something so dark, necessarily. But I would have expected him to go on to great things in his chosen field, because I have a tremendous amount of faith in the talented people I come into contact with. And hell, if he went to my high school, there’d certainly be a precedent for him going on to success. CHS alums have gone on to supervise background design for The Simpsons, to produce films based on novels by authors like Jonathan Lethem, and, of course, to write and release rock and roll records (there’s at least a couple of them: 1, 2). Nobody’s done anything quite so big as to write a song with the lyrics “I want to f*ck you like an animal” in it, and then to gain worldwide fame for that song, but I’m sure that’s only a matter of time.
The music I might’ve expected him to go on and write, given his piano background, his training in multiple instruments, and his interest in computer engineering (he did one year at Allegheny College, studying the subject) is best represented in the many instrumentals he’s produced. And among those, one of the most memorable is the song, “Just Like You Imagined.”
After initially hearing this song as part of the massive musical experience that was The Fragile, I have only recently come to love it as an individual song, thanks, in no small part, to its prominent use in the trailers for the recent film 300. It builds from a repetitive piano and guitar line into an honest-to-goodness wall of sound without ever losing it’s sense of purpose. I marvel at this because, as someone who’s tried to write a few songs of his own in the past, I’ve always struggled with the idea of building to a chaotic conclusion while remaining interesting, while keeping the sense of song intact.
And watch Trent explain how to play the song correctly in this rehearsal clip found on YouTube. I love watching him break down a song (I love the idea of anyone explaining so directly, yet so democratically, what each individual person’s part in a song is, probably because I felt so lost during my days playing in bands).
“Just Like You Imagined” is the kind of song that Trent isn’t yet writing again, now that he’s sober. It’s a song that only could have survived the birthing process back in the Fragileera, where his sense of aimlessness (I’m guessing that he felt aimless here, based on the descriptions of alcoholism and drug abuse we’ve heard him give since getting off the sauce) seemed to make him more open to creating seemingly tangential pieces, and figuring out where they fit later. Nowadays, I think a song like “Just Like You Imagined”, a perfectly wonderful instrumental, albeit a short one, would get incorporated into a song with lyrics, maybe a song that was just missing that one last thing.
Trent’s laser-like focus in recent years has brought us albums like Year Zero, his best since The Downward Spiral, and it’s the result of finally getting clean, so I won’t complain too much. But I do miss the instrumentals, and I hope they come back some day in a big way.
Topics: Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails Get Disciplined
Nine Inch Nails fans who remember the days when we waited five years or so between NIN albums must be absolutely losing their shit right now. Over the course of the last five years, we’ve gotten With Teeth, Year Zero, Ghosts I-IV, a live DVD, and tour after tour. And now, Trent Reznor and company have released their latest single, “Discipline,” to radio, and to Internet fans the world over via their official Website. The chorus of the song features the line, “I need your discipline,” but, as longtime fan, I have to say to Mr. Reznor: “No you don’t!” Dude, if you were any more disciplined right now, you’d be Neidermeyer guest-starring in a Twisted Sister video.
Anyway, the single is “teh awesum,” as the kids say. Isn’t that what the kids say? Well, whatever it is the kids say nowadays to describe something wicked cool, that’s what this single is.
And perhaps it’s our first clue about what’s coming in two weeks.
Two Weeks Till NIN News
Trent Reznor has posted the cryptic message “2 weeks!” on nin.com for the second time this year. The last time he posted that message, it was two weeks before the impromptu release of the latest Nine Inch Nails record, Ghosts I-IV. What will come two weeks from now, on May 5? Another album? An update to the Website? Fans at Echoing the Sound are speculating even as I type this.
Me, I think the announcement will be that Hannah Montana really is opening for NIN this summer.
Geek Force FiveCast 011 (Video)
I took a break from prepping my classes for this week to geek out about the announcement of a three-hour Lost season finale and the arrival of my copy of the physical CD version of Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails.
Topics: Lost, Nine Inch Nails
