Lights in the Sky sampler

Sorry for the delay in posting; it has been a hectic day.

Yesterday, I noticed a myspace bulletin from the Nine Inch Nails page, stating that a new EP called Lights in the Sky was released online and free (like the last thing from nin.com, The Slip). The EP is a sampler of bands that are touring or playing with Nine Inch Nails during the North American tour.

I like the idea of the sampler. It gives us an idea of what to expect from the opening acts at the shows on the upcoming tour, as well as exposes some new bands to an audience that might not otherwise hear about new and interesting talents. However, I have to give this a 60% meh rating. While there are two outstanding tracks on this, the other three are nothing that really affects me.

Before I get to the music, some notes about what's in the download. I like the cover image, but the obvious implication of the "black triangle" UFO as depicted by three lights hovering in mid-air gives me the warning lights that also tripped in Year Zero; I fear that Trent Reznor may be heading down the path of X-Files conspiracy theory thinking and that worries me. But it's a pretty cool picture, and makes a nice album cover (as well as a .jpg can be cover, mind you). Also included in the download is a file of wallpapers, avatars, assorted web graphics, and a printable .pdf tour poster.

The first track on Lights in the Sky is A Place to Bury Strangers' "To Fix the Gash in Your Head." While I love A Place to Bury Strangers (as seen in this review I did several months ago), they picked my least favorite track from their catalogue to appear on this release. However, compared to the other appearances on Lights in the Sky, this sounds really good. I also suspend my criticism of this track since I truly believe A Place to Bury Strangers deserves the great amount of recognition that appearing on this EP will hopefully garner them. They're already gaining ground everywhere, so this will merely accelerate a process that would have the same result otherwise.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? chases with "We Are Rockstars," from their 2008 release You Have No Idea What You're Getting Into. I'm not quite sure what to think of this one. It's quite a danceable little beast, but I can't help but feel like it's overdone club lightshow dross. Not great, not bad, somewhere in the range of things I'll only listen to when in the rare mood for it (one Tuesday afternoon every other year). I'm a bit more adamant about how lackluster Crystal Castles' "Crimewave (Crystal Castles vs. HEALTH)" is. Electro dance sort of stuff with enough video game sound effects to make you think you're stuck in an 8-bit equivalent of a gay disco. While I give them credit for the innovation factor of those sound effects, I find the result is cheesy and annoying (edit: I've been informed by Frank that Crystal Castles isn't as innovative as they seem to those of us not sitting on this particular style of music; see comments for more information).

Following the Metroid dance mix thing, Deerhunter jumps in with "Like New," featured on the Fluorescent Grey EP from last year. It's the shortest track on Lights in the Sky, and the one that stands out the most. Deerhunter tends to move more along the lines of an indie rock/shoegaze variety, while most of the music on Lights in the Sky is electronic in nature. This is more spacey, echoing out with a certain strained beauty that is absent from the other songs.

The final song on Lights in the Sky is Nine Inch Nails' own "Echoplex." In case you missed my review of The Slip, I will reiterate that I find this track unimpressive and dragging out unnecessarily. I still rate it as a solid "meh."

While two out of five songs would hardly be worth buying had this been a CD release, being a free download makes it at least worth the 39.2 mb it takes up on your hard drive (that's the whole package of mp3s and pictures). It's an experience that may induce a listener to try something new and see what amazing (or lackluster) things are happening out in the music world beyond that which already is established. In that respect, I have a great respect for Mr. Reznor. Associating himself with these up and coming bands shows us that he has taste and wants to experience new music as much as we do.

Even if you hate everything on Lights in the Sky, you spent nothing on trying, and if you do like something you heard, you did so without risk. I didn't like most of this, and already knew one band fairly well (bought A Place to Bury Strangers' eponymous album from last year twice, once on CD and once on vinyl), but at least I picked up some new names and gave them a spin. It's all about giving new stuff a shot; go for it.



Nine Inch Nails' website
Deerhunter's myspace
A Place to Bury Strangers' website and myspace
You can find the others on your own.

No, I don't really need your discipline: Nine Inch Nails, The Slip

Due to the lack of anything else on hand to work with, and the fact that I’m not of the inclination to do another opinion piece, I’m going to run the risk of being filleted alive by my usual readers and throw some good-natured darts at a dartboard named The Slip. Since you are reading this, it is safe to assume you have internet access, and therefore safe to assume that you have heard about the latest excretion from the Nine Inch Nails womb.

I wonder if the title is a reference to the fact that Mr. Reznor has given Interscope the slip, sort of a 43 minute “f#ck you” to his former overseers. “Hey guys! Look at me giving away music! Count your money now, you chimps!” In that respect, I have to give Mr. Reznor credit for simply throwing all ideas about profit to the wind. He probably could have made himself a million for the second time in a year had be dropped it with a similar pay scale as this year’s prior release, Ghosts I-IV; instead, he decided to surprise us with a gift. Unfortunately, I find this gift to be rather bland. There’s nothing to really hate about it, it’s entirely listenable, but I don’t find anything so grabbing as to make me soil my pants in excitement. I usually don’t do a track-by-track review, but here’s some notes jotted down about each song as I was listening.

1. “999,999”: Opening ambiance; nothing to really say.
2. “1,000,000”: Loud, noisy, catchy beat, tight, fun and jumpy. The lyrics are of the depressed, suicidal variety of high-school overemotional dross we’ve come to expect from Nine Inch Nails, but if you’re seriously going to complain about Reznor’s lyrical quality, I’m afraid I’m going to have to beat you upside the head with the studded aluminum baseball bat of knowledge. Trent Reznor has never been known for writing fantastic lyrics, so shut up. His strength is in being blunt about how he’s feeling. But, what does Reznor have to be depressed about? He’s got one boot firmly planted in the back of the bloated corpse of the American music industry, waving both middle fingers in the air and screaming, “I told you nothing could stop me now, but you didn’t believe me! Why didn’t you believe me?!” He may feel like he’s a million miles away, but is that such a bad place to be?
3. “Letting You”: The sort of aggressive quick beat thing that I never cared much for in NIN music. Nothing new, but not as obnoxious as, say, “Getting Smaller.”
4. “Discipline”: The criticism of ‘gay disco’ has been made since this dropped, so I don’t think I need to beat it with that stick. Might be fun to dance to, as Trent intended; might also make good sex music.
5. “Echoplex”: I gave this a rating of ‘meh’ when I first heard it. It has grown slightly on me, but I’m still not crazy about it. Feels like it drags out the end unnecessarily.
6. “Head Down”: Doesn’t do anything for me.
7. “Lights In The Sky”: The sort of slow-building track that always winds up 6-8 tracks in, a.k.a. the quiet song. Feels like the quiet song has been done better on prior albums.
8. “Corona Radiata”: Interesting title. Instrumental that isn’t bad, but not great either. Puts me to sleep, actually.
9. “The Four of Us Are Dying”: … and so am I while listening to this. Not awful, but a bit too meandering.
10: “Demon Seed”: The transition from the prior track is jarring. Really not impressed with this one. Same angry stuff we’ve been hearing since day one.

Maybe I’ve become jaded, but after Ghosts I-IV (and prior masterpieces), I’ve come to expect a bit more out of Mr. Reznor. This whole thing sounds like the same thing we’ve been hearing for the past couple years. While I’m glad he hasn’t gone completely loopy and transitioned to big band lounge music, a change in pace would be nice. I’ve been seriously trying to like this album all damn week, but every time I run through it, it bores me even more. There’s plenty of energy, but no real spark. I have to admit, I feel kind of like I’m picking on the handicapped kid considering this release was handed out to all the fans as a thank you. However, just because it was given freely doesn’t mean we have to accept it for what it is and be jubilant solely because it was free.

I’m genuinely surprised at how fast this came out. Most artists tend to wait a while for the shockwaves of their prior release to die down a bit before running out and dropping another album on the heads of the listening public. Not Trent; oh no, my dears, he lacks that particular strain of patience. A mere month after Ghosts, and he’s at it again. No one can fault the man as lacking motivation.

The speed of this release most likely has something to do with his shaking loose the shackles of label supervision. While his new-found freedom may seem exciting initially, it is not without its issues. Having no-one serving the purpose of an editor above him may actually be detrimental to the process and final result. There’s nobody to stand over his shoulder and say, “Trent, this sucks,” or, “Trent, didn’t we do this already?” Editorial review is an essential part to any artistic expression. When a novel is in the process of publication, there is a whole army of people picking over it with a fine-tooth comb searching for mistakes, errors, and things that just don’t work. Imagine if a book went to press before someone stopped the author with the news, “Pages 137-145 look like a cat snuck into your house and had a seizure on the keyboard, while the entire last chapter is punctuated solely with semi-colons; what gives?” A supervisory entity makes sure the final product is worthwhile, and, lacking any sort of overseer, Trent is pretty much running around like a child hopped up on too many glasses of cream soda. It's a whole load of fun, but is it good?

[Detour] However, this criticism would be more valid had the music industry not decided to take a page out of Hollywood’s playbook and create whole catalogs of sound-alike mediocrity. Frank Herbert, in the introduction to his short story collection Eye, explained the Hollywood technique: Don’t take risks. Find out what succeeds and copy it. The record industry has taken to that methodology with a fervor and now the radiowaves are populated with cookie-cutter pop-punk acts and legions of rock bands chanting, “Let’s be like Nickelback.” Derivation is one thing. We wouldn’t have much of our great contemporary music if the current crop of musicians didn’t nick at least a bite off their predecessors, but this is outright cloning! Around the end of last summer, I kept hearing on the radio a song that if you held a gun to my head and told me to correctly identify the band, you may as well have just painted the walls with my brains since I could have sworn it was Avril Lavigne. It wasn’t; it was someone that had the same insipid lyrics and annoying voice. I ask, has it always been like this and I was just unobservant? Was the music industry really better "way back when?" The point being that the record heads, instead of doing a good job of bringing new and compelling music to the masses and insisting on their signed musicians to stop being like everyone else, celebrate the blatant ripping-off of contemporaries to make a quick buck with radio-friendly repetition. It’s not unexpected to say a company wants to make money, but, Christ, they can at least pretend to care about artistic growth on the occasion. [End Detour]

One could argue that The Slip is a clone of With Teeth, but I don’t support that notion. The Slip strikes me more has being a cousin to With Teeth, dressing and talking the same way but trying to have a modicum of individuality. It’s not a bad album, but doesn’t make any distinctions in the Nine Inch Nails catalogue. Personally, I feel that this vein of music is dried up and at risk of getting infected and requiring amputation of the whole limb should Trent insist on continuing to stick it with needles. Ghosts I-IV spoiled us with a new and exciting direction, taking the high road of artsy instrumentals while The Slip is more like a slide down Been There, Done That Avenue. Some might find that comfortable, like a familiar old blanket. There’s nothing here we haven’t heard before; it’s the same pattern of anger/thrash/something danceable/more anger/instrumental/more thrash/end of album. If you liked With Teeth and Year Zero, then sign onto this one because it’s more of the same. The fact that it’s sticking to the pattern is mitigated by the fact that it’s free, so take five minutes out of your day, download it, and come to your own conclusions.



Nine Inch Nails official website

What happens when the mind is free to wander: Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts I-IV

Writing a review of Ghosts I-IV at this point seems a bit moot considering it’s been all over the place since March 2^nd, but I wanted to wait until I had the actual 2-disc set in my hand before voicing an opinion since (as you all know well by now) I like to figure packaging into my reviews. Plus, the added time allows for a more level-headed approach. Now that I have a physical copy, it’s time to review it, and if you don’t want to read what I have to say, go find out what’s new at Reader’s Digest or something.

Trent Reznor stated on his website that he wanted to do something like Ghosts for a very long time. My feeling is that its roots lie in “A Warm Place” from The Downward Spiral, but that’s just my gut instinct on the matter. Friends think that it may have started long before that. I have to give the man a lot of respect on the basis that he originally intended this release to be an EP; I like that mode of thinking since many artists seem to be discouraged from doing EPs these days to the point where it’s almost a dead art. However, things spiraled out of control and Ghosts became a massive double album instead. I won’t fault him for not following his initial intentions since the result is quite amazing.

While I really enjoy the album, I feel like it was being over-hyped when it was released. It’s good music, but some people were acting like it’s the single greatest artistic contribution to the human race since Neanderthals started pissing cave paintings. Stop that, goddammit! The raving fanboyisms are really f#cking annoying and leave me with the urge to kill things! (To be fair, the hype spiked and then died down rather rapidly; you escape unscathed this time, fanboys.)

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let’s talk music. Ghosts ranges from the beautiful minimalism that pops up every now and then on Nine Inch Nails albums to the static and noise Reznor is more well known for, blending the varieties seamlessly and making for a fantastic near two-hour experience that, as Reznor stated, is meant for daydreaming. I wouldn’t recommend listening to this in the car, as you will find yourself in the middle of a field with no idea how you got there and possibly staring at a confused cow that’s chewing cud right outside your driver’s side window. Not a fate I would like to face.

What I like most about Ghosts is that it isn’t the usual aggression and wild emotions that are typically associated with the Nine Inch Nails catalogue, at least not completely anyway. In that respect, it calls to mind Still, the semi-acoustic studio album featuring alternate versions of prior released work that accompanied the deluxe edition of And All That Could Have Been, and some of the more “aquatic” tracks (I can’t think of any other way to describe them other than as though I were under water) featured on The Fragile (several of which wound up on Still). Ghosts alternates between a subdued state of introspection and an occasion moment of dissonance, quite the opposite of the typical Nine Inch Nails fare. I really enjoy when an artist takes a chance and does something that is significantly different from what they usually do, and Ghosts certainly satisfies that impulse in me, even if it feels much like an extended Still with all the lyrics taken out and the electric guitars put back in.

To be honest, after Year Zero, Reznor probably could have made an audio recording of taking a dump and remixed it a dozen times, and have the result be more pleasant than some of the atrocities on Year Zero. While that album had its frequent moments of brilliance (“In This Twilight,” for example), some tracks should have been cut outright from the listing, “The Great Destroyer,” for instance. What was good was great, and what stank had me running to the nearest copy of “Banana Phone” to get the blasted things out of my short-term memory. Thankfully, Trent has kicked the laptops and 8-bit video game sound effects to the curb (mostly) with Ghosts, much to my delight.

The CD version comes in a tri-fold digipak with a booklet featuring studio photographs. Rather nice to see what the process of making the album looked like. However, I was hoping the CD liner notes and accompanying photos would look more like the pdf that came with the download. The photographs used there were absolutely beautiful (words I never thought I’d use to describe a Nine Inch Nails album). I loved the assorted artistic photos of close-up wave crashing, lampposts in the rain, desert train tracks, and so on. They really gave a character to the album, a visual expression of the sort of emotion that was being conveyed with the music, as opposed to the sort of process photos of studio equipment that, although very good, seem static, lacking life.

Overall, I really like Ghosts, despite any implied misgivings above. The music, the package, the way it was presented, it has been an enjoyable experience from the start, with the exception of cursing while fighting to get NIN.com working right on the evening of March 2^nd (hey Trent, how’re the servers doing since last month’s meltdown?). I’d rate it in the top ten of the year, assuming nothing so mind-blowing as to make me spontaneously mess my pants out of pure joy comes out between now and the year close. It shows that Reznor is willing to get out of his usual adrenaline-fueled screaming and just try something different. It echoes prior Nine Inch Nails songs of both instrumental and lyrical varieties, but presents them in an extended fashion and with a different tone. If you’re already a fan, then chances are you already have it by now, but if you’re not a fan, then I recommend giving it a chance. Considering it’s available as a full download^* with pdf and wallpapers and other such digital extras for less than the overpriced pseudo-coffee abominations at $tarbucks, and at 10 USD (plus 6.99 USD shipping^**) for the actual CDs, I don’t want to hear “I can’t afford it” coming from anyone unless you’re at the poverty level.

In other Nine Inch Nails news, I understand that part two of Year Zero is also supposed to come out this year, so I have to confess a certain fear that Reznor will again be fiddling with computers when his strength is with actual instruments, as exemplified with Ghosts. As such, Nine Inch Nails stands the distinct chance of standing on both ends of the quality spectrum for music in 2008, if “The Great Destroyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!” is any indication. However, I balance that fear with the news that we can look forward to more installments of Ghosts, which fills me with much glee and anticipation.

Also, just two days ago, a new single was released for free download. This track, “Discipline,” strikes me (and many people I know) as a leftover from With Teeth, but commentary from the artist himself indicates this was a one-off thing done for fun and not an indication of what he plans on releasing of album length in the near future. If anything, it’s more evidence to the power Reznor has asserted now that he’s free of label overseers and other Brooks Brothers-wearing stiff-necks. Imagine just recording something and giving it away shortly thereafter? This new method of distribution that Reznor is engaging in has much potential; I’m definitely on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what happens in the world of music now that all the rules have changed.



NIN.com, which is the only important website you need on this one.

^*There’s a free download of the first nine tracks, in case you’re still skeptical. No excuses. Seriously. None. Get to it.
^**Item of contention: shipping speed sucked for the price paid. 7 USD for shipping, and it took 5 days. It’s still not a bad total price for a double album though. This is of course irrelevant if your buy it in a store, which means you can pay anywhere between 10 and 18 USD, plus tax.