blksqul's Full Review: The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails
Every problem with this two-disc album comes down to the following two facts. The first: Trent Reznor goes out of his way to make his songs vague and opaque. He has commented before that whenever he writes painful, complex lyrics that reveal more of him than he wants people to see he suffers panic attacks, horrified at how much detail he has put in. "You guys shouldn't know some of this stuff," he worries. He'll agonize over what he has written, looking for a more universal way of putting his sentiments, which has the effect of losing the original flavor in favor of wallpaper angst. This is why there's so many "Everything's," "Nothing's," "Always'" and "All's," in his writing. It's not that he hasn't moved past the perspective of a teen-ager in his mind, where every problem that happens to you is the sum entirety of your world, and every new change seems the end of it; just that he's incapable of breaking away from dumbing himself down. It's less self-protecting than self-sabotaging, and that brings me to the second item.
While trying to kickstart his muse for this album, Trent sojourned in Big Sur, Calif. He was hoping that renting a beach house right next to the water would give him new ideas. He came away from his trip with piano-laced songs that so embarrassed him he immediately threw them aside as "Elton John crap." The only song which survives that session for this album is the graceful, pretty "La Mer" (The Sea). I don't know about you, but I think Reznor is incapable of writing like Elton John. I think what he really wrote, juiced by the ocean's tide, were songs that explored a different color in his emotional spectrum. Perhaps they were sweeter, more poetic, more sentimental. We'll never know, because Trent freaked out and gave us this diluted sonic monster instead.
Disc 1: Left (she said she needed her space)
As far as flailing angstfests go, you can't start on a more propulsive point than "Somewhat Damaged." Backed with music that is mathematically beating itself up, Reznor croons and coos about an unnamed person whom he wishes he could have been, invoking Icarus's fall, a sense of betrayal at realizing his perceptions don't jibe with reality, and some crack lyrics of hate -- "lick around divine debris" being one of my favorite marriages of Trent's twin obsessions of sex and comparing sex to religious decay. (Midwest guilt, anyone? -- you can take the megastar out of Pennsylvania, but you can't take Pennsylvania out of the megastar) The coda of this one turns into devolved, deranged screaming against an ex -- you can hear the tears behind the rage, a somewhat tarnished crystal.
Into "The Day the World Went Away," one of my favorite pieces of Trent atrophy. Apparently, he wasn't yet forcing his lyrics to follow inscribed angst-patterns, because this is something new -- an eight-line poem admitting, among other themes, to his lyrical shortcomings. "I'd listen to the words he'd say/But in his voice I heard decay/A plastic face forced to portray." That does his critics one better, with an emotional underpinning those critics always seem to lose in their dissection of Trent's music. I also love that the backdrop is wobbling to its feet, occasionally lashing out, but more often than not too drunk to do anything but watch a world map roll up in its hands.
"The Frail" is a pensive piano ballad without words, reflective without seeming morose. I'm glad Trent didn't write anything to go with the music, because lyrics would have just ruined the mood. It slips into the electronic grrr-attack of "The Wretched," which makes me cringe. The music itself is a fine blend of electronic and human, but the lyrics have already lapsed into his worrying habit of vague uber-angst. The overall feeling, of being betrayed by an ex, and subsequently, the world in which you both live, works but the words needed another going over. I mean, c'mon. "The clouds will part and the sky cracks open/And god himself will reach his f*cking arm through/Just to hold you down/Just to keep you down"? How did Trent sing this without laughing out loud? His belief in blanket angst continues as he sings with conviction about -- I'm not kidding you -- feeling like he's living, feet first, in the depths of a toilet bowl. Next.
Thankfully "We're in This Together" comes in to make you forget the laziness you just suffered through. A love song, an honest, angry love song, from Trent. It's easy to mistake this song as being about obsession since he sounds so charged and single-minded singing it -- but the conviction of his sentiments ("You and me, we're in this together now/None of them can stop us now/We will make it through somehow") makes it real. How many love songs do you know of where your best declaration of love happens in a moshpit?
"The Fragile" is another ode to love, but this time detailing a love lost. I am incapable of separating this song from an eight-year relationship that fell apart rather spectacularly. The most spectacular thing about it being it wasn't spectacular at all -- our collapse was a long time in the making, and the greatest feelings of betrayal turned out not to come from breaking up as much as the stark realization that our time together was no more nor no less special than what anyone else experiences. There was a certain arrogance to our love -- we felt strongly that we were romantically and emotionally far greater on the scale that measures happiness than any other couple we'd known, that we shared a connection that no one had felt before us, that we were given the gift to fully luxuriate in and appreciate the subtleties of touch, love, words and breath better than any other member of the human race. Of course, we were both fools for thinking that, and the result was staying together longer than we should have -- obsessed less with healing our differences than trying, via less defined means, to take a connection that we felt was so singular (an event in the world of romance) and make it live outside of projected hopes. Which led to the disintegration of our love into its component molecules, which then burned off, spinning into atoms, then splitting off as quarks, then only the sunlight. It was also the defeat of one of the longest self-sustaining friendships in either of our lives. At this point you're probably saying Mike, start talking about the song already! Well, I just did.
"Just Like You Imagined" starts out drowsy, like the sister of "The Frail" dreaming in the next room. Then it starts becoming more frenzied, backtracked with a bunch of screaming Trents. Make of this what you will, but I like how it wakes me up. And like "The Frail," this one also has no need for lyrics -- it tells a story fine enough on its own.
With a meandering vocal melody (which in itself is not a bad thing), "Even Deeper" comes in, promising more than it can provide. A scan of the lyrics shows a bit of complexity growing in the writing -- glimpsed with "And in a dream I'm a different me/With a perfect you/We fit perfectly/And for once in my life I feel complete/And I still want to ruin it." I'd love to see where this goes, but lyrically (and musically) this one just stands in place, walking over the same piece of carpet over and over. No growth, and little reason for me to care.
I think Trent realized the song was weak, because he immediately follows it with a raucous, spirited, vaguely fascist-sounding instrumental, "Pilgrimage." If this is what the pigs march to when they're all lined up, I can see why so many in Trent's world choose to be pork. It's like a fanfare that keeps playing a different fanfare. It has a sense of lopsided humor that is intoxicating for how much this disc lacks in it.
Speaking of marching pigs, "No, You Don't" sounds a lot like that titular tune from The Downward Spiral, slowed down in places and given an acid bath in others. As much as I love lyrics that tell a cohesive story, I'm also a fan of music that consumes everything with its power. So there's no reason to talk about this one in terms of lyrics -- I get too much of a thrill hearing it scorch my walls and collapse the ceiling. Let's hope Trent can keep this energy level going.
Hmm, okay, he has decided to follow not with more screaming falling apart odes to screaming and falling apart, but the pretty musicbox and twirling ballerina (her dress eaten away by the salt of the sea) of "La Mer." Bejeweled, sparkling in the sunlight, with lots of French and a jazzy feel to boot. Damn. Is it too late to petition Trent to release his Big Sur demos to the general public?
The aquatic refrain continues with "The Great Below," which is, for my money, the most ghostly, ethereal, downright beautiful piece of music Trent has yet penned. This is a spiritual and sensual high-water mark, evoking the best of the Cure's drowning songs ("The Drowning Man," "Just Like Heaven," "By the Edge of the Deep Green Sea") with a purring hum and syncopated, light-dark piano that is solely Nine Inch Nails. Just listen to Trent's voice, at times sad and muted, at times heightened and hoping, as ghostly as the words, as human as the music. Why isn't this played 24-7 in the dark spaces of aquariums where couples kiss next to the gliding fish and grope each other madly by the softly shifting green-blue-yellow light of the glassed-in water? (I so need to do that again)
So there we go, a solid four-star album, bookended by two of Trent's most powerful compositions in intent and musicianship, so you forget some of the middling stuff in the middle. On the whole I'd say ... what? What did you say? There's still another 11 songs to go? You're kidding me, right? I've already spend a good part of my morning writing this. Jesus Christ.
Disc 2: Right (but far from correct)
"The Way Out Is Through" is a shifting, spinning, lurching layer of sounds over whispered (and then screamed) versions of Trent. I'm not saying it's not a nice piece of gauzy, grisly music -- but doesn't Trent put out his remix albums for just this reason? This isn't really selling me on the whole two-disc concept.
Okay, here we go. "Into the Void" is funky and sexual in direct contrast to the tossed-off words. Prince is a definite influence here, and, if you know my love for most things Princely, I cannot see this as a bad point. Still, this could have easily replaced "Even Deeper" and contributed to making The Fragile a powerful single-disc album. Let's see what Trent has in store -- I trust him to make this worth my while. (let me just stop shaking and swaying in time to the beat first)
Ah, the sex-beat continues with "Where is Everybody?" I love it when Trent stops being ashamed that he is a pop artist and writes something unabashedly catchy. His lyrics here are a combination of the lived-in "For all I aspire/I am really a liar/And I'm running out of things I can do") (another pointed criticism at his own lyrical shortcomings, along with "I'm so tired of pretending/I wish I was ending/When all I'm really doing is trying to hide") along with the tossed-off conceit of rhyming as many negative gerunds that rhyme with "needing" as he can. Still, not so much um as yum.
Okay, Trent, you're on probation. Don't blow it. You've got me moving (and moved), so where to next? Hmmm, another instrumental, "The Mark Has Been Made." Kinda risky move on your part Trent, isn't it? Well ... the percussion sounds like distant shots, the guitar sounds halting and trembly, the cellos sound just one step away from being out of tune, the whole thing overlaid by a big smear of pop melody trying to sound harsh and metallic. Oooo, I like, I like.
"Please" is full of musical ideas and, sadly, no lyrical ideas. ("watch the white turn to red" isn't so much elusive and mysterious as tossed-off and groan-worthy) Still, it has a catchy melody, a jumpy beat, and Trent sounding like he's having fun, which is worth a lot on a disc trying to reach its f*cking arm through, just to hold you down, just to keep you down. That's not entirely fair. What the critics get wrong about Trent is he's not just a nihilist. He's a frustrated dreamer, a romantic at heart, and, making him such a powerful draw to certain women, an obvious sex-beast. Just listen to the sounds: he's effing your brains out with his music and his voice, even if his words need to be rewound and threaded on a new tape. There's no way anyone but an artist and a sensualist would be able to craft, seemingly effortlessly, these living, breathing, and yes, horny musical backdrops. His strength isn't in writing, it's in feeding himself into compositions that feel like the trailing off and beginning of charged, intense, just-out-of-reach-but-still-possible dreams. That he's always on the cusp without breaking through, lyric-wise, is one of his shortcomings, and one of the inconsistencies that changes him from an elusive, studio-perfect megastar into someone you feel you could know and understand. That's his power and his draw. He sets up the illusion that you could just as easily be his friend as anyone else's.
"Starf*ckers, Inc." sadly, takes Trent's gift of feeling you could be next-door neighbors and throws it in the trash, so he can rail at Marilyn Manson for reasons too prosaic and back-biting (and who cares, really?) to get into here. I like that the words are chopped up on top of one another, like some ransom note composed entirely out of words clipped from magazines -- Trent, the music fan, blown off by a friend who just happens to be an idol. I also like that Trent appropriates a '70s kiss-off for his '90s kiss-off. But the lyrics are too puerile and juvenile to mean anything outside of Hollywood hotel lobbies, and really, Trent, it's time to find a new metaphor for loss of control than giving head to another guy. I'm beginning to wonder about you and that particular lyrical obsession.
Into "Complication," which buzzes like a nest of hornets at the entrance of some stalactite-dripping cave. It's -- yes -- another instrumental (and as much as I'm enjoying these Trent, I already see where you could have easily cut songs and made a viable one-disc statement).
Using the whispery ghost-background found on several insect-chorused tracks on The Downward Spiral (and also closing the final moments of "Complication"), "I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally" is another ghostly, ethereal ode to losing your way and submitting to the loss. It's not as powerful as "The Great Below" on disc 1, but it shares the same sense of being unafraid to try new things. It's basically a pulsing bass, a drum ticking like a damaged clock, and Trent letting off some rather good poetry for his songbook ("the flowers of naivete buried in a layer of frost," for example).
This leads to "The Big Come Down," which is another one of this album's lyrical groaners but musical stunners. Remember when I was saying earlier about how Trent makes his backdrops sound horny? Oh yeah. Yeah, this fits. I'm frightened at the thought of what traits the kids who were conceived during this song might have. Don't laugh. Somewhere, it has happened.
Not content to let "The Big Come Down's" randy beat tear the covers off of you, Trents lets "Underneath It All" kick you right off the bed onto the floor. This one talks about the persistence of memory, and how it colors the present. Blah blah blah, who cares? There's about eight different beats and forty-five instruments playing. Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Winning the award for Worst NIN Title Ever, "Ripe (With Decay)" can't tell if it wants to be downcast and haunted or playful and lively. So it splits the difference by being both -- there's a gorgeous piano and string tune lurking in the guts of this ravaged, rainy, fiery, icy, expansive and claustrophobic thing. It makes me realize something, though. Trent has absolutely no problem composing instrumentals, and all of the ones I've heard on this album share the same sense of joy and dread, with this one branching out further than any of the others. So why did he feel it necessary to pad this album out with six lyric-free offerings? Why not make a fan-only E.P. that was nothing but instrumentals? As much as I appreciate Trent's muse and his ability at crafting sonorous/secretive/sexy backdrops, 23 tracks is simply too much. If he had gone back and really looked at his lyrics, given us a story to work with, this would be a compelling double-album worth revisiting again and again. As it stands, I play it about once a year all the way through. It's simply too long, too unfocused, to leave a lasting impact other than "Wow, that's a lot of music!" The Downward Spiral, on the other hand, feels like a two-disc album captured in one. It breathes with ideas and a sense of story. This album breaks out in new directions musically, and on several songs a new lyrical confidence is felt, but it doesn't lead to anything bigger. It's like listening to a friend on an off-day. You're glad to offer your support, you learn some new things through the experience, but in the back of mind, you're hoping things look better soon.
This double CD album The Fragile is very much a record meant to be listened to in one sitting. The album once again is performed with bombastic NIN mo...More at Buy.com
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