TTFN PT TWO (NIN @ T5 08.26.09)

(photos via Matthew Drazin's Flickr)

Even without an occasion, it's too easy to cherry-pick lines from Trent Reznor's work and apply them to the Nine Inch Nails (myspace) concert experience.  The lyrics are blunt bloodletting, underadorned(*) so as to easily express the immediacy of convenient frustration or despair; the tangled hellscape up front is not commiseration, it's application, butts cause with effect, summons up petty passing angers and existential frustrations into a swirling catharsis stew.  You were "up above it!"  Now you're "down in it!"  "Stuck in this hole with the shit and the piss... Now!  You know!  This is what it feels like!"

You are, you do, it does. 

"Wish there was something real!"  You're soaking in it.  "I don't!  Feel!  Anything!"  Denial, wishful thinking.

Melodrama insists Reznor sing about beginnings and endings -- there's even "This is the first day of my last days" and a song called "The Beginning of the End" for those who hate to choose -- and any transitional mentions took on added poignancy at the band's last New York concert "for a while."  "Throw it away!"  "This isn't meant to last!  This for!  Right!  Now!"  We ended the night's first song screaming, "Where the fuck were you?" and ended the main set cheering as Reznor sang "I am still right here."

There are quotables about promises and lies, too, and it's here where I'll shrug and sigh at the "end NIN" stuff.  There was a statement or suggestion way back after the tour supporting The Fragile that it was time to seal away the catalog and start something new; a note from Reznor that came with 2002's live DVD and CD called it "a reminder of achievement as well as a departure point."  He disappeared for a few years, but brought most everything back; pre-2002 material made up the bulk of this show's set list.  These ten shows are themselves a tacked-on victory lap for the "Wave Goodbye" tour, a "handful of shows" performed in "medium to small venues" to wash the taste of shortened, sun-spoiled amphitheatre sets from the band's memory.  Reznor made it clear from the stage that he still intends to make music.  This is just an announced touring hiatus, one that's generated a lot of attention and excitement.

At the Webster Hall show, after the band performed The Downward Spiral straight through for the first time ever, Reznor was quoted as saying, "I've always wanted to play that record... and that's the only time I'll be doing that."  He did it again less than two weeks later.

No one knows exactly what they're going to be doing in the future and sometimes you can help yourself move on by declaring a big harrumphy conclusion.  People will only be angry if Reznor doesn't go back on his word.

Nine Inch Nails - And All That Could Have Been (mp3)(buy)

I don't doubt parts of Wednesday night's show reaffirmed his decision.  A wham-bam early sequence (Wish-Last-Sin-March of the Pigs) was followed by an quick breather ("Something I Could Never Have") and the floor settled down early... but people used their extra energy to talk very loudly during quiet moments.  I don't know that the mook quotient was necessarily higher than Tuesday, but it was louder.  Lyrical expletives were inevitably recited with an embarrassing, eager emphasis.  Chatter drowned out "La Mer" and "Lights in the Sky" (a gorgeous little song).  Reznor, rarely inclined to chat, had first acknowledged us with a chipper, "How are you tonight?!"  Later he was admonishing yappers while he introducing his bandmates: "That's not cool, man."

Nothing was remotely cool, man.  I may glorify the misery and discomfort as necessary to the atmosphere, but conditions should at least be humane.  Throughout Tuesday night's show you could hear and feel Terminal 5's AC units kick in from time to time over the main floor.  On Wednesday you could not.  I was drenched on the first night, but five songs into the second I was wringing puddles out of my shirt.  The sweat and friction squeezed others' runoff into my pores ("Everything I didn't like about you is seeping into me;" "Your strain, it gets under my skin;" "My skin is begging you, please;" "Take the skin and peel it back;" "Shedding skin succumb dismay;" etc.) and for a solid week after the show my forearms bubbled with whiteheads and splotches and that is repulsive.  Reznor, on stage, was as sweaty as the rest of us, his shirt bunched and matted to his body, but at least he had the benefit of knowing from whom all his water came.  Like two hours into the show he said into the mic, "It's fucking hot in this place, isn't it?  Jesus Christ," and the ceiling responded, click-click-whooooosh.  Thanks, Terminal 5.

(Staff behind the front barrier occasionally passed back free bottled water, which was nice, but those bottles never got back very far.)

To think I'd dreaded this venue because of its sound problems.  Bass wins out and vocals get lost in the stratosphere.  The opening slots suffered from some of this.  The Horrors (myspace) -- former Gothabillies, present post-punks, future Mariachi men? -- still came off fine; they were conceived as something outsized, even though their singer's a mix of awkward adolescent and bad actor.  They're a five-piece, now, and I think their awesome bizarre Farfisa player has become their bizarre bass player.  "New Ice Age" and the girl groupish "Who Can Say" stood out for me.  Mew (myspace) has their fans, but rarely connected with the folks around me; sometimes the Danes seemed too precious, their sense of theatricality seemed misguided (they performed in front of "disturbing" projections that looked like an extended Spongmonkeys spot, granted themselves an encore).  Post-rockish crescendos made folks look up, at least.

But the main act sounded great.  A couple missed moments after Peter Murphy came out:  You couldn't hear his melodica solo (you could barely make out Reznor's pink dildo recorder accompaniment) during "Strange Kind of Love," and when he joined guitarist Robin Finck at his mic it didn't seem to be turned on.   Those were aberrations.  The intermittent crowd bursts, relatively intimate room, and clear audio allowed you moments to appreciate the musicianship and loose intricacy behind stuff often slammed as brutish.

It was hard to see whether Reznor had a mbira at the end of "The Wretched" or some electronic thumb-controlled equivalent.  He spent time inhaling audibly around the mic through "Downward Spiral."  "The Good Soldier" featured a glockenspiel (even Reznor looks like a twit on that instrument, it's unavoidable), "La Mer" had Finck on xylophone.  Justin Meldal-Johnsen switched between an electric and upright bass (plucked and bowed).  The buzz at the beginning of "Eraser" on Tuesday night was aided by the detached neck of a saxophone.  The extended, stilted intro to "Suck" was poked out of a touch screen.

(I'm grateful for Nyctaper's fine recording of this show.  My notepad stayed tucked in a Ziploc bag.)

It had been a little more than three years since I'd seen the band last, so I can't say how often they rework songs.  "Burn" sounded a little Living Colourish, perhaps it always has.  "Piggy" came out awesome, started twisted and moody, went drum-and-bass, then shifted through and layered dance styles.  It inspired a small club pit on the right side of the stage, one that continued through the cover of Gary Numan's "Metal."  (It would have been a good place to drop in "Only" -- or to bring out Britney Spears, who was headlining MSG a few blocks away.)  Reznor apparently tosses his tambourine out every night, and the guy who caught one crowd-surfed with it, twice, but missed the opportunity to play along with the band from over our heads.

I find myself unable to complain about the set list (again, "The Wretched"+"Wish"= Happy Boy).  During the show it felt like there was a lot of overlap with Tuesday's show (even with the guest star: Murphy redeemed himself on "Reptile," upped the difficulty by doing it upside-down, wrapped himself bat-and-prey 'round Reznor at the end) though a more than 50% turnover between nights is admirable.

The last song of the night -- the last song from this band in this city, for now -- was an odd, unsatisfying choice.  Ye olde Rocket From the Tombs nugget "Final Solution," Murphy doing the bulk of the frontwork.  Reznor & Co. had, over the course of a two-and-a-half hour show, already exhausted their traditional closers.  But beside this cover being in the band's back pocket, there was nothing particularly Nine Inch Nails or New York about it.  Considering the source, they could have at least drawn from the NYC-based half of that contingent.  ("Ain't it Fun" or "Down in Flames," maybe?)  The lights came up with thirty minutes left before the venue's curfew.  During the last half of the show there was a tension in the crowd, a worry that their band was about to leave the stage.  When they finally did, a lot of people stood there with Huh?s on their faces, expecting something stronger to send them out into the night.

These two shows did not feel like the end of anything.  To be fair, the final-final shows-for-now (barring extension) are happening (or not) this week in L.A.  This wasn't a polite parade of back-patting guest stars (no Bowie, no Manson, no Brit-Brit, sorry) honoring a band that was limping out the door.  Nor was it an exhaustive affirmation of presence, some strained attempt to go out so supernova we'd be forced to acknowledge a black hole left behind.  It got easy to forget amidst all the anticipation and coverage that Reznor's announced intention was to "play some FUN shows to end this up with."  Comes down to this:  Superb band, doing whatever the fuck they wanted to up there, letting us be a part of it.

I just wanted to say Thank You, Trent Reznor.  Without your help I'm not sure I'd know where to put all my insides.  See you next time.

(*)  The rare moment when Reznor drops a detail -- like the name "Annie" in "The Becoming" -- it disorients.  Having already been the agent of access to a universal emotional core, personal particulars are both embarrassingly intimate and distracting.  I love that song's tirades so much, but I don't recall ever have been angry or protective enough of anyone named "Annie" to include her in them.  For whatever reason I wind up substituting John Denver's Annie and mentally reconfiguring that man's simple love song into NIN parody.  You fill up my senses!  Like the mountains in springtime!  Come fill me again!  RAWWRRRRR!

*

Set list here.

Also there, that week:

Bowery Ballroom, 8-22-09:  Alias Pail, Crazy Days and Nights (1 - 2), Hard Rock Chick, Pink is the New Blog, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, San Francisco Bay Area Concerts, Spin, Variety , The Village Voice,

Webster Hall, 8-23-09:  Billboard, BrooklynVegan, Hard Rock Chick, JamieSanford.com, LimeWire Music Blog, MetalSucks, MTV, The Music Slut, The New York Times, Nymphean, Pink is the New Blog, Quiet Color, Riot's Rock Legend, Teen Vogue,

Terminal 5, 8-25-09:  The Audio Perv, BrooklynVegan, Consequence of Sound, I Had an Awesome Time, MTV, Nico's Intimate Notebook, Pink is the New Blog, Rock it Out! Blog, Self-Titled Mag, Underground Wire World, What's For Dina, With This I Think Im Officially a Yuppie,

Terminal 5, 8-26-09:  Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, Dan Contogiannis's Crazy-Awesome, Hard-Rockin' Blog Of Doom, LEMONed I Scream,  LimeWire Music Blog, Metal Injection,  Pink is the New Blog, Quiet Color,  Vagrant Life, Vulture, xdowncastx

*

The mp3 above is from the 2nd CD of the deluxe edition of And All That Could Have Been, which in quieter moments can be my favorite Nine Inch Nails disc.  There are great stripped-down versions of "Something I Could Never Have" and "The Becoming" on there; the slight and lovely "Gone, Still" has been performed live on this tour.

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